Social care services that embed and deliver strengths-based approaches to care and support

A strengths-based outcomes approach supports people who access care and support and their families to live the best lives possible by building on their strengths and capabilities. It means recognising that everyone can contribute to and take responsibility for their lives: the person, their network of friends and family, and their community.

We continued to support five local authorities to develop and provide training to build the confidence and skills of those working in across both children, adult and social work teams in applying this approach. We also supported their management teams to prepare for the systemic shift needed to support the approach. We’re finalising online training resources for management in the wider social care sector and an offer to support management will be available in 2024 to 2025. 

In 2023 to 2024, we focused our support on the part of the transformation programme that has the highest complexity and implications for the social care workforce and where we can add most value – the elimination of profit in children’s services. Specifically, the elimination of profit in residential children’s care.

To help us support capacity building in local authorities, we sent them a questionnaire in December to get information about recruitment, retention and training needs around therapeutic approaches. We’ll now analyse the data and share the main findings with Welsh Government.

In June, we published an evaluation of a new programme that focused on hospital discharge. The programme aimed to develop new skills and capability to rebalance the reliance on risk- and problem-based approaches, with a view to developing and delivering person-centred care. The joint programme (BRR) was a hybrid of the ‘Collaborative Communications Skills’ (social care) and the Care Aims (health) training and skills development. 

The evaluation by the Social Care Institute for Excellence found that after the programme most people who took part felt more confident talking to patients about what matters to them. Almost everyone said they now had a better understanding of duty of care.

Of the 68 people who took part in the programme, 12 became ‘mentors’ or ‘champions’ and attended more training which helped them further embed the approach.

We published relevant and up-to-date research about place-based care and trauma-informed approaches, and their role in providing social care in Wales.