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 work to understand the self funders experience regarding care homes, we published our report Exploring the self-funder journey to living in a care home, exploring future self-funders knowledge, attitudes and information and advice needs.
- In May and June we asked under 25-year-olds about their awareness, usage and attitude to sexual health services in Surrey. We did this by visiting East Surrey and Godalming colleges, and created an online survey. In total 594 people responded to our survey. You can read more here: Sexual health services for under 25s - July 2025.pdf
- In quarter 2 we explored attitudes to independence courses at libraries, and awareness and attitudes to community/ day centres by speakig to 34 Surrey residents. Our report shares our findings and recommendations: Left on the shelf - October 2025
- As part of our recent community engagment we asked people about their awareness and barriers to taking up NHS Health checks for those aged 40-74. We will publish this report at the end of January.
- In April we will publish a year in review, summarising what we have heard about adult social care over the last year.
- April 2026 will see us start our next adult social care project, which will be looking at oral health in care homes.
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.