Information for People using Community Care Services and their Carers
Outcomes are the impacts or effects of services or support on the people who use them. Focusing on outcomes means that services work with users and carers to find out what their goals are, and then everybody works together to try to achieve these goals. From 2006 researchers have been working with the Joint Improvement Team of the Scottish Government to build user and carer outcomes into community care practice. This has resulted in a way of working together which is called Talking Points.
Talking Points: A Personal Outcomes Approach is based on research with lots of service users and carers in England and Scotland. The work on finding out what matters most to people using services started at York University in 1996. More recent work took place at Glasgow University.
More information is available to help explain what Talking Points is about. There is a five page document Explaining Outcomes for People using Community Care Services and their Carers. This explains what outcomes are, what it means to have an outcomes focused assessment or review and provides case studies of good outcomes for a service user and good outcomes for a carer.
Explaining Outcomes for Users and Carers [133Kb]
There is also a PowerPoint presentation to help explain Talking Points to service users and carers.
Talking Points Presentation [1Mb]
Videos and Digital Stories
The digital stories includes stories from service users and carers. A limited sample are available in the Digital Stories section of the website.
Case Study
You can read examples of stories about outcomes here.
Case Study of Outcomes for Service User [47Kb]
Case Study of Outcomes for a Carer [46Kb]
Vocal Case Study [19Kb]
Future Challenges for Carers
NHS Lothian published a paper outlining the challenges to community nurses as they work with unpaid carers. These challenges reflect a changing culture in the way that health care will be delivered in the coming decade.
