What are we doing?

Working closely with people using the service, we want to understand how we could reduce the workload for social workers and other people involved in providing Dorset Council’s adult social care service.

Our aspiration is to go beyond the limits of a traditional discovery. We would like to co-create and test an idea that works for people looking for social care. This is a bit of an experiment, and we are excited to find out how it will play out.

Why are we doing it now?

The Government is making changes to the adult social care system from October 2023. This changes when people will be able to get help from their council and how much they will have to pay.

The changes will increase the demand on local authorities particularly around care needs and financial assessments.

Care assessments help councils understand the care needs of a person and how best to meet them. Local authorities across England already have large backlogs of these assessments.

There are many factors behind the backlogs, including accumulation of work after Covid and challenges of filling vacancies in the sector. The workload for social workers is expected to grow and as a result waiting time for care assessments could go up.

Simply speaking, the problem we are trying to solve is how we can process all these additional assessments without adding to the backlog?

How are we working?

We are working in the open by hosting fortnightly online sessions in which the team shares updates for interested parties such as other local authorities, as well as sending weekly updates about our exciting journey.

Our ambition is to share our findings widely and make them reusable across multiple local authorities.