National Care Service - keeping care support local part 2 – community health care: regional forums - findings summary

How we ran the sessions

People who attended took part in group discussions and completed group exercises.

A week before each event, we sent participants a summary of the questions we would be asking during the session.

On the day, we explained the discussion topics and provided written information to make sure the questions were clear.

During these sessions, we asked people about how community health services work with social care support and healthcare services.

These part 2 sessions for Keeping care support local were aimed at mental health professionals, community nursing professionals, and general practitioners (GPs). The topics we covered were:

• creating a shared understanding of how professionals should approach community healthcare
• what works well and what could work better in relation to integration between community health, social care support, and other health services

We asked attendees to read a draft ‘approach to community healthcare’ (see Annex A) which had been developed by the Scottish Government community health project group and key organisations involved in community healthcare. The purpose of creating the ‘approach to community healthcare’ was to work towards a shared understanding between the Scottish Government and other organisations about how community healthcare should be delivered within the National Care Service.

Participants were asked to use highlighter pens to highlight any words or sentences that they thought were important or that they thought were confusing or they disagreed with.

After a break, attendees were split into groups. Each group was given a different scenario to read. The scenarios were about:

• an older person who has early stage Alzheimer's disease and needs support with day-to-day tasks at home
• a person in their 50s who has had a stroke and needs support to return home from hospital and get back to work
• a young person who has learning disabilities and who needs support to transition into adult life

Each group was asked to write down:

• how the current system helps them in providing good quality care to the person in their scenario
• what challenges they might face when trying to provide good quality care to the person in their scenario
• what they would like to change about the system in order to provide better quality care to the person in their scenario

We also collected feedback about how people felt the session itself went at the end and used this information to improve how other sessions were planned.

This was to make the regional forums as accessible as possible for participants and to make sure we were asking the right questions. Because of this, the discussion questions changed slightly between the first regional forum and the last regional forum.