Adult care national award
Barnet Council has jointly won with its partner councils in North London a national award for improvements to the quality of care received by residents in its network of adult care homes.
The North London Councils partnership, which comprises the borough councils of Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Islington, clinched the top prize in the Local Government Chronicle’s (LGC) 2021 annual awards in the ‘Health & Social Care’ category. It was the only multi-council partnership to be named as a finalist in this year’s awards.
Competition judges awarded the partnership for its successful innovations in tackling the North London area’s shortage of beds and reducing the cost of care provision. Judges were also impressed by the partnership’s advances to increase the size of its professional carer workforce and its ability to provide high-quality care in response to the challenges created by COVID-19.
Cllr Sachin Rajput, Chairman of Barnet Council’s Adults & Safeguarding Committee, said:
“I congratulate Barnet Council’s exceptional team. This LGC Award reflects how the council is taking significant steps forward to increase the provision of care for the most vulnerable adults in the borough. This includes investment in new specialist facilities that will add extra capacity for more than 150 residents. The council is expanding its care workforce and giving all the training and skills they need, and with four other councils Barnet has secured £2m in funding to achieve this. The Proud to Care programme provides support to our highly valued carers and is recruiting many newcomers to our growing workforce.”
Dawn Wakeling, a founding member and chair of the North London Councils partnership, said:
“I’m delighted that we have been recognised in the LGC awards for the work we’ve done to improve adult social care for the residents of Barnet. Our partnership has seen us jointly tackle some the biggest issues to providing first-rate support for our thousands of adult care residents. Through the systems we’ve put in place, our care home residents now receive a higher quality of care from better management of available beds, more trained staff, and best-practice measures to protect against COVID-19.
“The success of our joined-up approach is now used as a model for the rest of London’s councils. Our win recognises the hard work and dedication of our teams to support many of North London’s most vulnerable residents.”
Prior to the pandemic, the partnership was focused on improving efficiencies in the local care home market, which cut expected annual cost increases by £6.5m. It also oversaw a recruitment drive to attract more people into the carer workforce, which resulted in more than 900 people register their interest in roles in North London’s care homes. During the COVID-19 crisis, the partnership put best-practice measures in place to protect residents from the risk of infection, which succeeded in significantly reducing the number of cases in the pandemic’s second wave.