FRIDAY, 28 AUGUST, 2015

IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Your Community, Your Voice, Your Future – Green light for Aberfeldy’s new state-of-the-art health & care facilities

A proposal to integrate health and social care services in one location in Aberfeldy has been given the green light by NHS Tayside and Perth & Kinross Council.

The business case setting out plans to reshape health and social care services in the area was approved yesterday at NHS Tayside Board meeting and by members of Perth & Kinross Council’s Housing and Health Committee on Wednesday.

This means that vacant wings in Dalweem Residential Care Home will be redeveloped to include health provision, respite and rehabilitation facilities.

A capital budget of £650k has been identified by Perth & Kinross Council to upgrade the communal areas and laundry facilities in Dalweem and this routine building work is due to start in September 2015. The redevelopment work on the vacant wings is scheduled to begin in spring next year.

Current services provided at both Aberfeldy Community Hospital and Dalweem Residential Care home will continue as normal until the redevelopment work is completed.

NHS Tayside, Perth & Kinross Council and the independent and voluntary sector partners have been working with local residents since early 2014 to explore options to provide sustainable health and social care services to meet the needs of the community now and in the future.

As part of the engagement programme, a working group considered options for the future provision of hospital and residential care in the area.

The working group proposed various options, which were presented to the wider community at a local consultation and engagement event in Aberfeldy earlier this year. The community supported the option involving the redevelopment of a vacant wing in Dalweem Residential Care Home to include health provision, respite and rehabilitation facilities.

Staff at Aberfeldy Community Hospital and Dalweem Residential Care Home have also been involved throughout the engagement process and robust joint working arrangements will be put in place to ensure safe and effective patient care.

Bill Nicoll, Director of Primary and Community Services for NHS Tayside, said, “Working with people in the Aberfeldy area and local staff and practitioners has produced a positive solution that combines the strengths of our integrated services within one facility. This is what local people have agreed as the preferred way forward and both the NHS and local authority are investing in this to ensure that people with health and care needs can be looked after locally.”

Councillor Kate Howie, Vice Convenor of the Perth & Kinross Council’s Housing and Health Committee, said, “This proposal has taken 18 months of careful planning to develop and is the product of extensive partnership working between the community of Aberfeldy, the Council, NHS Tayside and Perth and Kinross Association of Voluntary Services. This project provides hard evidence of how partnership working can deliver the integration of services on a single site, reflecting the wishes and needs of the community, reducing costs, and making our health and social care services sustainable into the future.”

The project is an early example of health and social care integration in practice.

NHS Tayside and Perth & Kinross Council will join up in a new way to deliver adult health and social

care services from April 2016. This new way of working will improve the quality and consistency of services for patients, service users, carers, families and communities and will deliver services that meet the needs of the increasing number of people with longer-term and often complex needs.

Health and social care integration will ensure that those individuals with long-term conditions and

disabilities will get the joined-up and seamless support and care that they need to live safely and

independently in their own homes for as long as possible.

Contact:

Debbie Huband

NHS Tayside Communications

(01382) 740134