Care City Year In Review 2022/2023
Our 2022/2023 Year In Review shares our progress towards our mission of happier, healthier lives for North East Londoners.
The past year has been a time of great change and challenge for Care City, its partners and the health and social care sector. Growing demand for public and health services, coupled with austerity and re-organisation, all of this on top of a cost-of-living crisis that is exacerbating inequalities and threatening the social fabric in our communities.
For the NHS, the Winter of 2022/23 with long waits both before and in A&E was tough. Over the year we have continued to develop our relationships with local authorities across North East London and with the NEL ICB, supporting several councils to think about how they can make use of care technology and helping with the development of social care staffs use of new technology to help keep the frail and elderly out of A&E and the emergency beds inside hospital. Whilst we all recognise it is much better to treat people in their own homes, too many spend too long in hospital beds at risk of losing their independence.
The theme of maintaining independence runs through most of our work including working alongside very clever partners, Dorothy whose successful development of AI and AR technology helps map community spaces to enable those living with dementia to still enjoy their community and maintain their independence for longer. Technology can appear very abstract, but the way in which it enhances the possibilities of keeping independence for a few more years is very heartening.
We continue our work addressing the workforce challenges across health and social care, expanding the Apprentice Nursing Associate Programme so that care homes can benefit from new skills as well as providing a route to progression and new career ladders for care staff. We also commenced work with local partners BHR Academy to consider how we can improve the work experience offer for local young people into health and care opportunities.
We were delighted to receive grant funding from the Cadent Foundation this year. This has seen us working with local residents and taking a co-design approach to understand what opportunities there are to help local residents at risk of fuel poverty. As this has been such a critical challenge for our local communities, we also launched a Fuel Up campaign with partners BDCollective and BDGiving to encourage donations for fuel vouchers to help those families struggling with soaring energy bills, raising £3974.
