Carmarthenshire County Council crowned silver award winner for Innovative CONNECT service

Carmarthenshire County Council has been crowned the silver winner at this year’s prestigious iESE Public Sector Transformation Awards ceremony for its CONNECT service.

The awards, hosted in London in September, provided an opportunity to celebrate and share the most innovative practice in transforming local public services. They also recognise the way local public services have worked together to share best practice and transform service delivery.

CONNECT, which is delivered by the council’s Local Authority Trading Company Delta Wellbeing, was nominated under the Innovation category for the incremental support provided to our most vulnerable in the community throughout the Covid pandemic.

The service, which is the first of its kind in Wales, provides an enhanced telecare and lifeline service across Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire. It seeks to transform the way social care is delivered through a new model of self-help and pro-active care enabled by Technology Enabled Care (TEC) to improve wellbeing, support independent living for longer and reduce demands on long-term or acute care.

This is achieved through wellbeing calls, bespoke TEC packages, access to a 24/7 community response team, digital support and help to access the local community.

Carmarthenshire County Council Cabinet Member for Health and Social Care Cllr Jane Tremlett said, “We are absolutely delighted that the Delta CONNECT service has gained recognition at this year’s awards. As a council, we recognised the value of TEC a few years ago and its potential to support the challenges our health and social care systems were facing, and so prioritised the transformation of the service. More recently it has been at the heart of our Covid response, enabling us to protect the 8,000 people shielding with pro-active calling, food, medicine and practical, triaged support.”

CONNECT has been funded under the Welsh Government’s Transformation Fund enabling the West Wales Care Partnership Board to work together to help shape the future of health and social care services across west Wales.

Since launching in 2020, the service has been acknowledged as good practice across the UK as a whole. It exemplifies an ambition of working across sectoral boundaries to deliver a radical, person-centred approach to wellbeing, care and support. Now in its second year of delivery, with agreed funding in place until March 31, 2022, the programme accelerated in response to covid and now delivers an innovative service to more than 3,000 people across west Wales.