Community equipment

Without them carers would be put at risk and many essential care services could not be delivered safely.

For many years the NHS and local government departments (Education and Social Services) supplied their own equipment. The result has often been a fragmented approach which is confusing for the people who use the services, carers, and the professionals who prescribe the equipment.

The integration of community equipment services is an objective in the strategy 'Designed for Life', and the 'National Service Frameworks for children and older people'. In order to help deliver this objective, the Welsh Government has made a £12.5 million capital investment to improve the way the service is structured. This will put services in much better shape to cope with rising demand in the future. Much of the work to date has concentrated on ensuring that:

• formal partnership arrangements are in place;
• appropriate storage and decontamination facilities are in place;
• appropriate IT systems are in place to ensure equipment is tracked, serviced, recalled, refurbished and recycled as appropriate.

Partnership Approach

Working in partnership is key to integrating community equipment services. The Welsh Government has provided support to help local partnerships make a success of this project. This support has included:

• five regional two day workshops on integrating community equipment services;
• seven regional workshops on developing formal partnership agreements for community equipment services;
• three regional workshops on the trusted assessor framework;
• a conference on integrating community equipment services;
• presentation at Association of Directors of Social Services conference (services to people with a physical and sensory disability); and
• monthly meetings with local community equipment services (CES) coordinators since July 2006. There have been further presentations at these workshops.

All of these workshops have been designed to allow wide representation from local partnerships and have been held free of charge. 

Guidelines for developing and integrating CES in Wales have been  produced following consultation in 2008 and are available from this page. 

Further information on integrated community equipment services is available from the Social Services Improvement Agency website.