Our public health and adult social care priority
The adults, wellbeing and health partnership at Surrey County Council includes public health and adult social care. Read more here: Health, Wellbeing and Adult Social Care - Surrey County Council
Public health improves health and reduces health inequalities by using an evidence-based approach to make recommendations on the delivery of health and well-being services. Through all of life's stages - from birth, childhood, youth, parenting, later in life and at the end of life – you or your family are likely to access local health and wellbeing services that when working well are based on the evidence of what is most effective. Read more here: About public health - Surrey County Council
Adult social care aims to help people stay independent, safe and well so they can live the lives they want to. This includes people who are frail, have disabilities, mental health issues as well as the people who care for them. Surrey County Council provides information and advice about care and support to all residents, offers short term help and options for longer term support if people have more complex needs. Read more here: Adult social care and support - Surrey County Council
The focus of this priority is to help service users navigate the social care system (we know that many people don’t know what’s available or how to access it) and to explore the motivations, barriers, understanding and views of Surrey residents around their health and wellbeing. Our insights support the system partners responsible for delivering health and social care services to ensure they design and deliver them in a person centred way.
Many people contact our Helpdesk when facing issues with social care, so we have ensured that our team has had Care Act training so they are well equipped to support people who contact us.
We will also support adult social care and public health teams to listen to service users and potential service users to design and deliver services in a person centred way.
Recent work under this priority
Our recent work under this priority has included:
- As part of our community engagement in quarter 3 we asked people about their awareness and barriers to taking up NHS Health checks for those aged 40-74. Our report has now been published on our website: People’s experiences of NHS Health Checks.
- In March we published our project on Prevention: Living, coping, thriving: exploring preventative health behaviours of people aged 50-66 in Surrey. Our research focussed specifically on the attitudes of people in their 50s and 60s (those approaching the age range which, statistically, uses the NHS and social care the most) to their own health and wellbeing. Geographically, we focussed on Spelthorne – the borough the poorest health outcomes in Surrey - and compared to the rest of Surrey.
- In April we will publish a year in review, summarising what we have heard about adult social care over the last year.
- April will also see us start our next adult social care project, which will be looking at oral health in care homes. According to the Surrey Oral Health Strategy 2025 - 2028, oral health is worse in older adults, and the oral health of care home residents is much worse than their contemporaries. Care home residents of all ages need bespoke support to maintain their oral health, to keep them pain free and prevent malnutrition. Our aim with this project is to explore current oral care processes in care homes by speaking directly to managers and staff. We will also give residents (with capacity) and their families an opportunity to feedback. We want to identify both areas for improvement and best practice and to facilitate knowledge sharing between relevant providers to improve oral health of Surrey’s care home residents. Following discussions with Surrey Heartlands, Adult social care and Surrey County Council public health team, we believe we can add value by exploring current usage of toolkits, training needs and sharing best practice.
Reports and bulletins relating to this priority can be found under the public health and social care categories of our reports section on our website.
You can find out more about how social care fits within the wider healthcare system on our Understanding social care page.