Reshaping care for older people
Self-assessment checklist for NHS boards and councils

Prepared for the Auditor General for Scotland and the Accounts Commission
February 2014

Introduction
1.	Audit Scotland published its national report, Reshaping care for older people, on 6 February 2014. This paper accompanies that report and sets out the main issues raised in the report.   NHS boards and councils should assess themselves against each statement and consider which statement most accurately reflects their current situation.  This approach will enable NHS boards and councils to identify what actions need to be taken forward.
2.	The last column in the checklist can be used to record sources of evidence, supplementary comments to support your assessment or to highlight areas of interest.  
3.	Copies of the national report can be downloaded from our website www.audit-scotland.gov.uk

Self-assessment checklist for NHS boards and councils
The last column in the checklist can be used to record sources of evidence, supplementary comments to support your assessment or to highlight areas of interest.
Issue	Assessment of current position	Comments	
	No - action needed	No - but action in hand	Yes - in place but needs improving	Yes - in place and working well	Not applicable		
Spending	
We are working with the Scottish Government and our partners to:
•	improve and maintain data on cost, activity and outcomes for health and care services in local areas
•	collect data to monitor costs and activity of health and care services for older people, specifically data on community based services where there are currently key gaps.							
We are working with our partners to develop more consistent information on how much we spend on different types of care for older people and the impact that services are having on older people. 							
We are using existing IRF data, along with information on needs and demand, to help make decisions on how and where best to invest public money locally, and have set this information out clearly as part of joint strategic commissioning plans.							
Our joint strategic commissioning plans clearly set out how we will move resources to improve services for older people, including how resources will shift to the community in the short and longer term.							
We are doing more to understand why activity and spending on services for older people varies across Scotland, to look at how we compare and to support improvement.  As part of this we are working with local practitioners to help:
•	use information to benchmark activity and costs
•	identify areas for improvement
•	identify good practice.							
 Progress with Reshaping Care for Older People	
We are working with the Scottish Government to ensure that for the remainder of the Change Fund it is clear:
•	how the money has been spent
•	the impact initiatives have had on older people and other services
•	how much initiatives have cost
•	how successful initiatives will be spread.							
We are working with partners to ensure that we use a consistent tool to assess dependency in older people.  							
We have produced integrated workforce plans for health and social care services, to underpin RCOP, to ensure staff with the right skills and experience are in place to deliver the care needed in each local area.							
We are monitoring and spreading successful projects by ensuring that initiatives aimed at improving services for older people have evaluation built in from the start to show how cost effective they are and how they are performing.							
We have identified initiatives that have had a positive impact on older people and:
•	specified how much they cost and the impact on other services
•	been clear how they can be sustained in the longer term.