Cardiff Council is looking to become one of the first local authorities in Wales to shape domiciliary care to fit the Welsh Government's new plan for health and social care in Wales. 

Published by Welsh Government in July,A Healthier Wales: our plan for Health and Social Careis the first national plan of its kind. It describes seamless services delivered at a local level. 

Now a Cardiff Council report to be considered by Cabinet when it meets on Thursday, September 20, outlines how future commissioning of domiciliary care in the city can play a key role in Cardiff implementing the Welsh Government's Healthier Wales policy. 

Pending Cabinet approval, detailed work will need to be undertaken with people with care and support needs, their carers, and the domiciliary care sector in general, to ensure any future commissioning arrangements reflect what matters to them. The new arrangements would be implemented in November 2020. 

To allow time for the detailed preparation work to take place, the current commissioning arrangements which are due to expire on November 3, 2018 would be extended for a further two years. The new approach, prompted by Welsh Government's July'sHealthier Walesplan, also involves Cabinet revisiting their previous domiciliary care commissioning decision taken in January, some months before the publication of the new national plan. 

Cabinet Member for Social Care, Health & Wellbeing, Cllr Susan Elsmore, said: "The Council commissions 30,000 to 35,000 hours of domiciliary care per week, for approximately 2,200 people, at a cost of £23.5m a year. This is clearly a significant resource, supporting a great number of people. Therefore reshaping how we commission our domiciliary care packages provides us with a real opportunity to place Cardiff at the forefront when it comes to delivering the Welsh Government's Healthier Wales agenda. 

"Our current commissioning arrangements have brought tremendous benefits for the people receiving our care. Most notably, we now have historically low levels of delayed transfer of care in Cardiff, meaning that more and more people are able to return home from a stay in hospital as quickly as possible. 

"With the publication of the Welsh Government's first ever Wales-wide national health and social care plan coinciding with the requirement to renew our current domiciliary care arrangements, now is the time to build on these successes and place the principles of the new national policy at the heart of our services, particularly when it comes to working on a local level." 

Currently, many individual care providers operate across large parts of the city. The new approach would support providers to form strong links with third sector organisations, community health teams, social work teams, and other providers of care and support, in a local area. 

The report to Cabinet also sets out a recommendation to bring the payment process for residential and nursing home providers in the line with that used to pay for domiciliary care services. 

Cardiff Council's Cabinet will meet on Thursday, September 20 2018 to consider the recommendations. The full report is available to download fromwww.cardiff.gov.uk/meetings.