Sheffield City Council is implementing a community-based preventive model that is expected to reduce the pressure on health and care services by at least £10m over ten years. The programme involves working with primary and secondary care and local communities to identify people at risk of declining wellbeing; community support workers (CSWs) signpost; outreach service to people at risk; and targeted populations are being supported to improve their personal wellbeing. This project will test the preventive model at scale – working with a cohort of over 21,000 people across Sheffield - with 18 CSWs being deployed to provide this service.
Research staff from HEDS are involved in the evaluation of this model using a cost-benefit tool as part of a broader evaluation plan led by ScHARR. Benefits will be calculated by assigning costs to each of the programme activities and obtaining costs on hospital and A&E attendances and admissions, and social care packages. The cost-benefit tool will assess the effect of this intervention among people who receive support from CSWs compared to those who do not receive support from a CSW in the same risk groups. Matching techniques will be used to control for observable characteristics to reduce bias due to confounding.
In addition to the monetary benefit, the analysis will also produce trends in: avoidable A&E attendances; avoidable hospital admissions; demand on social care (number of adult social care packages); size of adult social care packages; and reduction in non-medical general practice appointments.
This project is funded by Sheffield CCG’s Better Care Fund. HEDS contributions to the cost benefit work are from Tracey Young and Abu Alshreef. The final report is due to be submitted by June 2017.
