What happened next? SACMHA's #SpeakUp report - an African Caribbean perspective on home care

Background - what did SACMHA's report find?

SCAMHA held a series of meetings, speaking with people from the African Caribbean community who receive care in their own homes. They found that changes need to be made in Adult Social Care in order to better meet the needs of Sheffield's residents, including raising standards in the care sector, increasing diversity in the care workforce, and delivering client focussed and culturally appropriate care.

Read more about their findings in their report:

#SpeakUp 2021 - SACMHA Health & Social Care

Launching the report

SACMHA held an open day in October 2021, which was an opportunity for people to come together and hear more about their work. This included a focussed section and discussion on their #SpeakUp report about home care. A wide range of people attended the event, from people who had used SACMHA’s services, commissioners of health and social care services, and senior leaders from statutory organisations in the city.

Through this event, where decision makers were brought together with people using home care services, the group was able to reflect on and explore the issues raised in the report and explore ways in which the services could be improved.

What next? The impact of the report

After the report launch in October, Council representatives from across Adult Social Care have been developing a response to the wide-ranging recommendations. In February 2022, we all met to discuss the report findings, recommendations and the next steps.

Council Officers from across Adult Social Care are now finalising a collaborative action plan, which for each recommendation in the report describes actions, work-in-progress and additional information. This will be shared with SACMHA, and reviewed and updated at regular intervals.  As specified by Alexis Chappell, Director of Adult Health & Social Care at the Council: "Learning needs to be embedded right across Adult Social Care and built into the Delivery Plan.  This is a wider systemic issue, requiring overarching strategic focus".

The plan contains practical actions, with areas of focus including testing new approaches to commissioning and providing home care, developing social work practice and making changes to monitoring the performance of care providers. Taking steps to ensure that care delivery and interactions with Adult Social Care are culturally appropriate is also a key theme. 

David Bussue (SACMHA's Service Director) will also be joining their Strategic Board, and has been invited to speak at a wider Adult Social Care management meeting about the report findings.