Wandworth Local Health and Care Plan - October 2019

25 Our work - Age Well Many older people in Wandsworth enjoy active, healthy lives and have limited contact with health and social care services. It is important that everyone has access to advice and information they need to keep them well, helping them to look after their own physical and mental health. This will include access to “Social Prescribing” from GP practices and other preventative services. Although life expectancy continues to increase incrementally, healthy life expectancy is much shorter than overall life expectancy and the average person in Wandsworth can expect 15 years of deteriorating health in old age. For older people with the greatest health and social care needs in the borough, this plan outlines what we will be doing to improve services. How are we currently doing? It is important for residents the health and social care services they use perform well. One of our successes in Wandsworth is how we perform against national targets set through the Better Care Fund. These targets set out to measure the success of health and social care integration in the borough. Unplanned admissions to hospital We are performing well in reducing unplanned admissions to acute hospitals. This shows that we have good primary care and community services that can respond when people becoming unwell at home. Permanent admissions in care homes There has been a reduction in older people moving into residential and nursing care homes. This shows we have good health and social care support in the community to keep people living in their own homes for longer. Supporting people home from hospital We have some of the best performance nationally in supporting people home from hospital, with low numbers of people who are “delayed” in hospital while waiting for community health or social care services. This shows that we have responsive services and we work well across health and social care services to plan someone’s discharge from hospital.