• Care At Home
• Commissioning
• Delayed Discharge
• Equipment and Adaptations
• Governance and Management
• Housing
• Integrated Transport with Care
• Intermediate Care
• Managed Care Networks
• Performance Improvement
• Reshaping Care for Older People
• Rural and Remote
• Talking Points: User and Carer Involvement
  • Background
  • Staff Development and Leadership Materials
  • Communication Skills
  • Outcomes, Enablement and an Assets Approach to Health and Wellbeing
  • Risk, Outcomes and Safeguarding
  • Sample Tools
  • Service Users and Carers
  • Organisational Development
  • Using Outcomes Data
  • Digital Stories
  • Evidence, Learning and the Community of Practice
• Telecare in Scotland

Background

Talking Points: A Personal Outcomes Approach has developed from previous research on the outcomes important to service users and carers. A long term research programme on user and carer outcomes has continued at the University of York since 1996 conducted by the Social Policy Research Unit (SPRU). You can find academic papers from this work in our evidence section.

More recently, a UK wide research study, based at the University of Glasgow from 2004 to 2006, aimed to identify outcomes from services that are important to users, and to develop a tool to assess the effectiveness of partnerships from the user's perspective. This research included older people, people with learning disabilities and people using mental health services. The Users and Carers Define Effective Partnerships (UCDEP) report is available in the evidence section as are other relevant project reports.

The findings from these research projects have been tested out by the Joint Improvement Team in the context of community care in Scotland. The Talking Points approach has therefore involved working with partnerships to put the research findings into practice.

A number of key change, process and maintenance outcomes were identified as important by service users. For Carers, the outcomes are in four categories.

• Quality of life for the cared for person
  
• Quality of life for the carer
  
• Managing the caring role
  
• Process

For further explanation and to see the tables of outcomes please see the support pack for staff.

Talking Points Support Pack [123Kb]

Piloting and Development of Talking Points: A Personal Outcomes Approach

From July 2006 the JIT commissioned Ailsa Cook and Emma Miller, the researchers who worked on the outcomes project at the University of Glasgow, to work with partnerships on developing the user and carer outcomes approach. You can download reports from the early stages of our User and Carer Engagement Project via our Evidence Section.

Learning from early work was incorporated in the original UDSET report, available on the front page of the website. More extensive piloting took place from the end of 2007, in conjunction with development of the Community Care Outcomes Framework. Talking Points has been developed alongside the National Minimum Information Standards (NMIS) (2008) for assessment, care and support planning and review for all adults. Click here.

Other core resources are the key messages and philosophy and principles paper.

Key Messages [78Kb]
Philosophy and Principles [97Kb]

Talking Points and the NMIS will together support reporting on 10 of the 16 measures in the Community Care Outcomes Performance Framework.

Wider developments at a strategic level support the focus on outcomes in community care. Single Outcomes Agreements require local authorities to work with partners through Community Planning Partnerships, involving Community Health and Care Partnerships in setting and monitoring objectives, all framed in terms of improving outcomes for individuals. Since 2009, concern about demographic pressures and the economic downturn have resulted in increased policy focus on enabling and assets based approaches in health and social care and outcomes based working at the individual level is consistent with this