To receive Report No.169/2018 from the Director for People.

Report No. 169/2018 was received from the Strategic Director for People, and introduced by Kelly McAleese, Principal Social Worker and Lucy Beesley, Senior Practitioner, Targeted Intervention (Early Help). The purpose of the report was to provide an update on the impact of the ‘Many Years’ Intergenerational Project which was undertaken jointly by Adult Social Care and Early Years  and which ran between April and May 2018. The project brought together adults living in residential care and children from a local nursery for periods of structured activity with the objective of building positive relationships between the generations.

During discussions the following points were noted:

·         This type of intergenerational activity was very common in Europe and America where often nurseries and care homes were co-located.

·         The purpose of the project was to improve happiness so officers did not want to measure any other improvements and equally did not want to pressurise the children.

·         The normal work of officers in this field was drawn towards aspects of process but this project had showed the importance of relationships and allowed officers to get to know the adults rather than performing an assessment of them.

·         In order to champion excellence in Rutland, the Council wanted to promote personalization as the project had been a very valid experience for all those involved and the model (having structured sessions with a theme) had been shown to work.

·         Some of the positive aspects of the scheme had been mentoring for the children and the normalization of disability for the adults.

·         Heavy assessment based models were usual for both age groups; children had continual educational assessments and adults often had risk assessments in care homes. Behaviours and resistance to this could be matched at both ends of the age spectrum.

·         Although the project was encouraging it was sad that the UK seemed to have a cultural issue that led to a divide between the generations.

·         Sometimes attempts to help the elderly just re-enforced the issues and the boundaries that sat around it. For example, groups of older people often just reflected on how old they were and the perceived limitations of that.  Officers needed to consider the bias that they put on their practices, in conjunction with that imposed by individuals themselves. The project offered a huge insight in how work in the community should be undertaken.

·         Six weeks for the project had been considered an appropriate amount of time for the professionals working on it to give up their valuable time but also it was long enough to get a valid understanding of the learning outcomes.

·         The Early Years and Childcare Provider (EYCP) grant scheme was used to run play sessions led by early years’ practitioners. The intention was to extend that idea and have Scallywaggs stay and play sessions held at Rutland Care Village where residents would be able to join in with the structured activity.

·         Now that there was a blueprint for this type of activity there were plans to roll out the scheme further targeting the same age groups, although this could take time to implement if there were transport issues. Members suggested that the Healthy Grants Scheme pot which supported healthy wellbeing could be used for this.

·         In the future, the scheme could be adapted to include other age ranges, disabilities and levels of cognition.

·         A lot of work had been done on how to handle any deaths of the residents involved and the impact that this would have on the children.

AGREED

1.    The Panel NOTED the implementation and impact of the ‘Many Years Interaction Project’ and ENDORSED the direction of travel for Adult Social Care