Earlier this year the Living with Cancer Team were approached by Macmillan Cancer Support and asked to broadcast a webinar to the Macmillan community country-wide on Personalised Care and Support planning. The team were recognised in 2022 as a great example of putting personalised approaches into practice across an Integrated Care System, when they were awarded a Macmillan Excellence award in the Integration category at the Macmillan Professionals Conference. After much preparation the webinar was broadcast live on 12th October 2023 to an audience of 60 people.
Although we wanted everyone in the team to talk about their contribution to Personalisation, we decided it would be best for Kathie McPeake and Steph Wilkes from the ICB and Sam Lewis and Becci Pallett from ULHT to speak. The rest of the team took part in a Q&A at the end of webinar.
The webinar kicked off with an overview of the Living with Cancer Programme, and our approach, from Kathie. Kathie’s overall message was that personalisation should be applied right along cancer pathways, and by working together we are better than the sum of our parts when supporting patients. Steph, Becci and Sam then took over, and talked about Personalised Care and Support Planning itself, how to do a great one and how it can be used throughout a patient’s cancer experience. They used a fictitious patient as an example (but with real-world challenges that patients have faced) and showed how all sectors in Lincolnshire, working together, could support him to improve his experience and he and his family’s quality of life.
Q&A followed and we were surprised at how many people asked questions. We were able to answer all the questions either live or after the session. Several people got in touch afterwards and we have sent examples of our work and met with some of them. Macmillan told us afterwards that they have never had such an engaged audience, which was great to hear.
Kathie added “thank you LWC team for today and every day, for leading the way on personalised approaches and working so hard to improve the quality of life for people living with cancer in our county”.
Venues which are offering a place to go on Christmas Day
Across the county some people will be feeling alone, isolated or need a break out space this Christmas Day. Many of our wonderful Charities, Community Spaces and Churches are offering some company and food to share.
Please see the list of towns and contact details for more information on each. These spaces are free, open to and welcome all! Each has a slightly different offering, so please be sure to contact them to find out more, and book a space if you wish to attend.
We will update this list as more venues are identified, so please do let us know through the contact page if you know of any, and keep checking back.
Please note: unless specifically stated pre-booking is required to attend.
Some but not all venues are able to provide transport, please ask when booking.
Alford – Corn Exchange 11 – 1 pm Come along for a cuppa and some cake or just for some company. Festive treats and a warm welcome will be waiting. No pre-booking required. This is a free event.
Boston – Centenary Methodist Church will be open from 10am till 3.30pm on Christmas Day serving a meal at 12 noon. This is open to anyone who needs a safe space and company on Christmas Day. Please contact 01205 355543 or centenarymeth@gmail.com to book a space.
Boston – The Ball House 1 pm – 3 pm Community Christmas Dinner. Please contact Andy or Marie contact@theballhouseboston.co.uk or 01205 364478 to book a space.
Bourne – Don’t Lose Hope 11-3 pm Offering a buffet lunch and some company. Please contact 01778 420762 or email enquiries@dontlosehope.co.uk. to book a space.
Gainsborough – The Blues Club 11.00-14.30 Christmas Day Lunch Contact 01777 248354 or forms from Feeding Gainsborough, 18 Parnell Street to book a space.
Grantham – Grantham Passage, through Grantham Poverty Concern, are offering a Christmas Day meal for clients and families they support. Please get in touch via this link if you are one of their clients and would like to be included on the day. Grantham Passage Christmas Update (granthampovertyconcern.org.uk). They are also needing Volunteers to help in the preparation for the day, details on how to support them with volunteering or donations can also be found by following the link.
Skegness – Skegness Wellbeing Hub. 10 till 12pm. Coffee, Tea, Hot Chocolate. Mince Pies/treats, some carols over board games. The Storehouse Church, North Parade, PE25 1BY. Contact 07493 266569 for further details.
Spilsby – New Life Church 10 – 12 pm. There will fun for all the family, hot chocolate, carols, gifts and a spot of breakfast. Contact 07901 211220 for further details.
Stamford – Second Helpings is once again bringing some festive cheer to our community by providing our Christmas Day lunch at Barnhill Methodist Church on the 25th December .The lunch is open to anyone and includes a delicious turkey roast dinner with all the trimmings, pudding, hot drinks and of course Christmas cake. To start at 12pm. There is also a present for everyone who attends which is delivered by Father Christmas himself To put your name on the list, which is being held in the Pantry and also at the Café on Saturday. Alternatively, drop us a message on 07548 931317 or on Facebook, and we will get back to you. Please contact pr@secondhelpings.org.uk to book a space.
Provision of lunch offers to collect prior to the big day.
Market Rasen – Salvation Army are offering a take away Christmas Lunch that requires collecting on Saturday 24thTerence.carpenter@salvationarmy.org.uk to book your lunch.
We will update this list as more venues are identified, so please do let us know through the contact page if you know of any, and keep checking back.
The Personalisation Programme are excited to be able to offer the following fully funded training to all Lincolnshire patient facing staff in health, social care and the voluntary sector to assist you in your role when supporting people to improve their physical and/or mental health.
If you spend your life explaining what your patients should, could, must or need to do then this is the course for you. Motivational interviewing is a style of communication that uses a guiding/reflective style to engage with people, clarify their strengths and aspirations, and utilise their own motivations for change, and promote independence of decision making.
Lincolnshire Community Foundation is delighted to be working with South Kesteven District Council to provide vital funds across the District.
Grants of up to £300 will be given to individuals and families, who havenot received any cost of living support across the District. Funding originates from UK Government via the South Kesteven Household Support Scheme.
We recognise there are many households across the area who find themselves in financial hardship or just about managing, but do not qualify for any other benefit or income support. Support will be given predominantly in the form of vouchers for food, energy (no cash grants are given).
Katie Littlewood, Lincolnshire Community Foundation, Grants Manager for this fund said: “The Foundation has been invited to continue working with South Kesteven District Council to support people who haven’t been entitled to Government’s cost of living payments. We understand what a difficult time this is for many and will do what we can to help.”
Head of Service (Revenues, Benefits, Customer and Community), Claire Moses said: “This fund aims to support those on a low income, have limited savings, and are particularly at risk due to factors such as disabilities or caring for young children. I would urge anyone struggling, even if they are not on any benefits, and who feels they might be eligible and needs help with their application to get in touch with the Community Foundation.”
Applications can be made via the Lincolnshire Community Foundation Website www.lincolnshirecf.co.uk from 2nd October until 18th March 2024. Those without internet access should contact the Grants team on 01529 305825 or email katie@lincolnshirecf.co.uk
Notes to editors: About Lincolnshire Community Foundation
Lincolnshire Community Foundation is the county’s leading independent grant maker founded in 2002 and part of the network of 47 Community Foundations across the UK delivering positive outcomes for People and Places. Our work is grounded in the value of #ChangeNotCharity. The Foundation has, since its inception, distributed upwards of £18m with emphasis on small grants delivering a big difference. https://lincolnshirecf.co.uk
Lincolnshire Community Foundation are delighted to be working with West Lindsey District Council to provide vital funds across the District. Grants of up to £300 will be given to individuals and families, who havenot received any cost of living support across the District. Funding originates from UK Government via the West Lindsey Household Support Scheme.
We recognise there are many households across the area who are finding themselves in financial hardship or just about managing, but do not qualify for any other benefit or income support. Support will be given predominantly in the form of vouchers for food, energy (no cash grants are given).
Katie Littlewood, Lincolnshire Community Foundation, Grants Manager for this fund says:
The Foundation has been invited to continue working with West Lindsey District Council to support people who haven’t been entitled to Government’s cost of living payments. We understand what a difficult time this is for many and will do what we can to help.
Cllr Trevor Young, Leader of West Lindsey District Council says:
West Lindsey is pleased to be working with the Lincolnshire Community Foundation to support the delivery of the Housing Support Fund applications’
Applications can be made via the Lincolnshire Community Foundation Website www.lincolnshirecf.co.uk from 11th August 2023 until 18th March 2024. If you do not have access to the website, please contact the Grants team on 01529 305825 or email katie@lincolnshirecf.co.uk
Notes to editors
About Lincolnshire Community Foundation
Lincolnshire Community Foundation is the county’s leading independent grant maker founded in 2002 and part of the network of 47 Community Foundations across the UK delivering positive outcomes for People and Places. Our work is grounded in the value of #ChangeNotCharity. The Foundation has, since its inception, distributed upwards of £18M with emphasis on small grants delivering a big difference. https://lincolnshirecf.co.uk/
Lincolnshire County Council is coordinating a submission to the Department of Health and Social Care’s Accelerating Reform Fund.
They already have some ideas submitted by voluntary organisations and from care providers. For example: Wraparound support for people when they go home from hospital; a deep clean and maintenance service; a review and redesign of the Carers Emergency Response Service; an approach to carers for people with Learning Disabilities as they age, an expansion of information and advice services; or an extension of the Trusted Assessor system.
Can you add value to the suggestions? Do you have ideas of your own that would speed up or scale the adoption of innovative practice? Or that will build capacity in adult social care in Lincolnshire?
At this point all that is needed is a high level outline describing the idea, the outcomes you hope to achieve, the challenges you might face, what you will measure to prove its impact and what teh overall impact will be.
Your ideas should meet one of the 12 priorities set by the Minister of State for Care:
Priority 1: community-based care models such as shared living arrangements
Priority 2: supporting people to have greater control over their care options, such as by using digital tools to self-direct support or communicate needs and preferences
Priority 3: investment in local area networks or communities to support prevention and promote wellbeing, enabling people to age well in their communities
Priority 4 (focusses on unpaid carers): ways to support unpaid carers to have breaks which are tailored to their needs
Priority 5: digital tools to support workforce recruitment and retention, for example through referral schemes
Priority 6: develop and expand the impact of local volunteer-supported pathways for people drawing on care and support
Priority 7 (focusses on unpaid carers): ways to conduct effective carer’s assessments with a focus on measuring outcomes and collaboration
Priority 8 (focusses on unpaid carers): services that reach out to, and involve, unpaid carers through the discharge process
Priority 9: digital workforce development and market shaping tools with capability to map, strengthen and grow local workforce capacity relative to system demand
Priority 10: social prescribing to connect people with information, advice, activities and services in the community
Priority 11 (focusses on unpaid carers): ways to better identify unpaid carers in local areas
Priority 12 (focusses on unpaid carers): ways to encourage people to recognise themselves as carers and promote access to carer services.
Join Lincolnshire Community Adult Mental Health Transformation for the second in a series of webinars.
The series is designed to empower health professionals, and mental health advocates, with the knowledge and tools they need to be part of the paradigm shift in the world of mental health care.
In this session, the Community Connectors will talk about the practicalities of community-driven mental health transformation. Discover more about local initiatives and how they support people through the festive season.
Join us to be inspired by transformative grassroots efforts in your community.
Details of the webinar is below.
Topic: Our Communities
Date: December 12, 2023 Time: 12:30-13:20 (50 mins)
This food summit aims to bring together Foodbanks, Community Groceries and organisations offering Food Support across Greater Lincolnshire to share ideas, best practice and develop solutions.
Thursday 23rd November 2023, 9:30am-4pm
New Life Centre, Mareham Lane, Sleaford, NG34 7JP
Tea & Coffee from 9.00am. Lunch provided
As we all face the difficulty of sourcing food and supporting our communities we hope to support each other in finding solutions and collaborating.
The day will focus on four key areas:
Increasing Dignity
Community Groceries, Cafes and other socially inclusive models
The day is free to attend for anyone in Greater Lincolnshire involved in emergency and community food support, and includes refreshments. Booking essential.
Free parking – we encourage attendees to travel together. If anyone is struggling with transport please contact: laura@lincolnshirefoodpartnership.org
This event is being organised by Lincolnshire Food Partnership with support from New Life Centre Sleaford, Lincolnshire Co-op and Acts Trust, Lincoln
The below is taken from the foreward of the Summary. Please follow the links for the full article.
This year has been a turbulent one for health and social care.
In addition to the ongoing problem of ‘gridlocked’ care highlighted in last year’s State of Care, the cost of living crisis is biting harder for the public, staff, and providers – and workforce pressures have escalated. This combination increases the risk of unfair care – where those who can afford to pay for treatment do so, and those who can’t face longer waits and reduced access.
Adult social care providers are facing increased running costs, including food and electricity, with some struggling to pay their staff a wage in line with inflation, which affects recruitment and retention. This is likely to have an impact on people, both in the quality of care they receive and in providers’ ability to re-invest in care homes – data from our Market Oversight scheme shows that care home profitability remains at historically low levels.
Local authority budgets have failed to keep pace with rising costs and the increase in the number of people needing care. As adult social care places funded by a local authority are often less profitable, there is the risk that people who live in more deprived areas, and are more likely to receive local authority-funded care, may not be able to get the care they need.
Some people who pay for their own care at home have had to cut back on visits to support their basic needs. One homecare provider told us that, due to the cost of living crisis and increased fuel prices, it had to increase the rates charged. Because of this, some people had to reduce their care visits to a minimum, which had an impact on their quality of life.
Workforce pressures, already a huge challenge, have further intensified, with ongoing industrial action by NHS staff unhappy with pay and conditions. The number of people on waiting lists for treatment has grown to record figures and in the face of longer waits, those who can afford it are increasingly turning to private healthcare. Research from YouGov shows that 8 in 10 of those who used private health care last year would previously have used the NHS, with separate research showing that 56% of people had tried to use the NHS before using private healthcare.
The danger is that the combination of the cost of living crisis and workforce challenges exacerbate existing heath inequalities, increasing the risk of a two-tier system of health care. People who cannot afford to pay could end up waiting longer for care while their health deteriorates. Our adult inpatient survey, based on feedback from over 63,000 people, found that 41% felt their health deteriorated while they were on a waiting list to be admitted to hospital.
People may also be forced to make difficult financial choices. We heard from someone who receives benefits who resorted to extracting their own tooth because they were unable to find an NHS dentist. They then had to pay £1,200 on a credit card for private treatment, doing without household essentials until the debt was paid.
While the publication of the NHS Long Term Workforce plan has been a positive step in addressing workforce pressures, implementation will be challenging – particularly without a social care workforce strategy to sit alongside it. We continue to call for a national workforce strategy that raises the status of the adult social care workforce and ensures that career progression, pay and rewards attract and retain the right professional staff in the right numbers. It is encouraging that Skills for Care has made this an area of focus.
In our inspection activity, we have continued to take a risk-based approach this year, focusing our inspection activity on those core services that, nationally, are operating with an increased level of risk, and on individual providers where our monitoring identifies safety concerns. Ratings data shows a mixed picture of quality, with a notable decline in mental health and ambulance services.
We have continued our focused programme of maternity inspections, with the overarching picture emerging of a service and staff under huge pressure. Ten per cent of maternity services are rated as inadequate overall, while 39% are rated as requires improvement. Safety and leadership remain particular areas of concern, with 15% of services rated as inadequate for their safety and 12% rated as inadequate for being well-led.
While it has been encouraging that all maternity units inspected so far have adjusted the level of consultant cover to meet recommendations made in the Ockenden report, the cover model is often fragile, with rotas relying on every consultant being available. We have seen examples of services taking action to manage staff shortages safely – but we have also seen issues with governance and lack of oversight from trust boards, delays to care and lack of one-to-one care during labour, as well as poor communication with women and difficult working relationships between staff groups.
Alongside our programme of maternity inspections, we have commissioned a series of interviews with midwives from ethnic minority groups to explore their experiences of working in maternity services and their insights into safety issues. A common theme from these interviews was that care for people using maternity services is affected by racial stereotypes and a lack of cultural awareness among staff. One midwife told us; “The NHS is amazing, but it was built by white people for white people. We need to adapt, because now we have a diverse population and workforce.
Access to and quality of mental health care also remain key areas of concern, with gaps in community care continuing to put pressure on mental health inpatient services and many inpatient services struggling to provide beds. This, in turn, is leading to people being cared for in inappropriate environments – often in emergency departments. One acute trust told us that there had been 42 mental health patients waiting for over 36 hours in the emergency department in one month alone. When people do get a bed in a mental health hospital, the quality of care is often not good enough. Safety continues to be an area of concern, with 40% of providers rated as requires improvement or inadequate for safety.
Recruitment and retention of staff remains one of the biggest challenges for the mental health sector, with the use of bank and agency staff remaining high and almost 1 in 5 mental health nursing posts vacant. We’ve raised concerns that staffing issues in mental health services are leading to the over-use of restrictive practices, and we’ve worked with our expert advisory group for autistic people and people with a learning disability to develop a clearer and stronger position on these practices, including restraint, seclusion, and segregation. We expect all providers of health and social care to recognise restrictive practice and to actively work to reduce its use.
Many of the challenges described in this year’s State of Care are to some degree caused by a lack of joined-up planning, investment, and delivery of care. Integrated care systems present the opportunity of bringing together local health and care leaders with the populations they support to understand, plan, and deliver care at a local level. This would, in time, move some of the focus of care away from big institutions and towards local and self-care provision, with autonomy to act on the needs of a local population and an increased focus on preventing poor health – not just treating it.
However, in our first look across local care systems, we found that while all systems have some equality and health inequalities objectives, not all these plans have timeframes and measures. All systems need clear and realistic goals, and support to achieve these, that reflect how they will address unwarranted variations in population health and disparities in access, outcomes, and experience of health and social care.
This opportunity must be grasped to ensure fairer care for everyone – so people get the care they need, not just the care they can afford.
The LHP Hardship Fund is set up to support both new and existing customers who may be struggling due to the current cost of living crisis. It will aim to support where there is no alternative external funding, or as a method of topping up funding so all customers can access the same level of support.
Some of the ways which the fund will be distributed include…
Supermarket vouchers for food, small electrical and household appliances, bedding
Fuel vouchers
Curry’s vouchers for white goods – electric cooker, fridges etc
Argos vouchers for basic furniture – beds, mattresses, sofas etc
Carpetright voucher for carpeting one essential room where appropriate
The Money Support Service (MSS) at LHP will be responsible for allocating these funds. The MSS will receive a referral for a customer, complete a welfare form with the customer to determine their support needs and reasoning for requesting support (this could be increase in bills, loss of job, etc.) An income and expenditure form will be completed, and evidence is required from the customer to prove their financial hardship via bank statements, for example.
How much financial support will each customer get?
Customers will receive a maximum of £250 per household which will be determined in conversation with the customer dependent on their specific needs.
How will we determine which customers need support?
Following a referral to the MSS we will ascertain what support a customer needs and if appropriate it will come from the Hardship Fund.
Fuel Bank Foundation
The unique Fuel Bank Foundation solution provides same-day help to address self-disconnection. Emergency credits are made to prepayment meters for families in crisis. Any supplier’s meter is topped up within a couple of hours.
Fuel Bank is delivered through a number of trusted community partners up and down our country, from Local Authorities to housing associations, local debt support charities or community groups.
LHP are a partner with the Fuel Bank Foundation and so our Money Support Team advisers can access the vouchers and get them sent to customers of LHP.
.The lunch is open to anyone and includes a delicious turkey roast dinner with all the trimmings, pudding, hot drinks and of course Christmas cake. To start at 12pm. 
There is also a present for everyone who attends which is delivered by Father Christmas himself 
To put your name on the list, which is being held in the Pantry and also at the Café on Saturday. Alternatively, drop us a message on 07548 931317 or on Facebook, and we will get back to you. Please contact 
