Care at Home Block Contract

Care at Home services provide personalised care, including social and emotional support to enable people to continue or resume residing in their own home. The purpose of the service is to ensure quality of life for the individual, while enabling them to retain their independence. Successful delivery of the service involves putting the person at the centre of the decisions about the way they live and the support that they want to receive. The Council's intention is to tender a pilot for a small block contract for 300 hours per week to operate alongside the Care at Home Framework. The block contract will operate for 1 year plus an option to extend for a further 1 year period. This ‘Test of Change’ block contract will differ from the framework and explore new approaches to service delivery across all areas of West Lothian, which will include responding to priority emergency need, geographical constraints, and addressing those packages of care that have been problematic to fulfil under the existing care at home arrangements. The project will also aim to ensure the availability of high quality, cost effective, reliable services that can adapt to meet surges in demand from critical areas such as hospital discharge and crisis care and help to alleviate winter pressures on the system. The block contract will attract a guaranteed contracted value each week which also differs from the framework. The success of the block contract will be evaluated on an ongoing basis and will inform future Care at Home contracts.