Maximising Recovery, Promoting Independence: An Intermediate Care Framework for Scotland

1. Introduction

Enabling people to live independent lives, with meaning and purpose, within their own community, is a fundamental principle of social justice and an important hallmark of a caring and compassionate society.

Demographic changes, alongside a decade of difficult finances, means this is one of the 3 biggest challenges facing Scotland - alongside economic recovery and climate change. The extent of the challenge we face in caring for older people, along with our approach to meeting this challenge, have been set out in Reshaping Care: a programme for change 2011-2021¹.

Older people and people with long term conditions are major users of health and social care support services in both the statutory and third sectors. Although the full social and economic costs of long term conditions in Scotland is not known, it is estimated that costs for mental health problems alone are around £8.6 billion, or 9% of GDP².

Enabling and Intermediate Care (IC) are a core element of our strategy to re-shape our health, care and support services for older people and those with long term conditions.

IC supports the key objectives to enable independence and avoid unnecessary admission, or stay, in hospital or a permanent admission to a care home by providing a 'bridge' or transition through services at key points of crisis in people's lives.

There is growing recognition of the important contribution made by IC not only in Scotland but in the rest of the UK and internationally. In Scotland, the Joint Improvement Team (www.jitscotland.org.uk) provided funding for five Intermediate Care 'demonstrators' in 2009/10 to increase the pace of development and to develop practical tools and solutions which could be shared across Scotland.