Help us shape the future of your local drug and alcohol services

East Sussex County Council would like to hear from local people to help shape the future of drug and alcohol services in the county.

The contract East Sussex County Council has with the main drug and alcohol treatment service provider STAR (also known as Change Grow Live) is up for renewal in 2025.

In preparation for this, the Council is asking residents across the county to share your thoughts on what you think this service should look like in the future by completing a short survey.

If you’ve had direct experience with the service, know someone who has, or would just like to get involved, then please do so as we want to hear from you.

Take part in the survey and share your views: eastsussex.gov.uk/newdrugandalcoholservice

 

Money help and advice if you’re feeling the pinch

Lots of us are feeling the impact of cost-of-living pressures right now, and we know for many of you this will be a worrying time. You might be particularly affected if you have a disability or long-term health condition, receive benefits, are a carer, or are unemployed.

If you’re struggling with money related issues, you’re not alone and there is support available. Visit the County Council’s Cost of living support pages for a range of advice and  resources in one place, like access to food, help getting benefits you’re entitled to, debt advice, or because money worries are impacting on your mental health and wellbeing.

It can feel overwhelming to know where to start, so in this article we’ll share some examples of the local and national support on offer, and where you can find more resources.

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Help on offer for people diagnosed with hearing or sight loss

Do you find yourself turning the TV up louder than other people, or have you been struggling to hear on the phone? Or perhaps you’ve noticed some changes to your sight recently? These could be some signs of hearing and sight loss, and you’re not alone. In East Sussex we have a growing population of people who have hearing or sight loss, and both are common.

While hearing and sight loss can affect people of any age, they become more common as we get older. Almost one in six people aged over 65 have sight loss which affects their day-to-day living, and the number of people with sight loss in East Sussex is expected to increase 26% by 2030. According to the charity East Sussex Hearing there are 116,000 hearing impaired people in the county and 40% of people over 50 have a hearing loss.

As more and more people experience hearing loss, sight loss, or both, it’s important you know where to turn to for support if you need it.

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Join in the Full of Life Festival to celebrate ageing

Members from the county’s seniors’ forums got together in County Hall during August to launch the new Full of Life Festival programme of events. The festival celebrates International Older People’s Day, held on 1 October, and features over 40 free and paid for activities open to the 50 plus age group.

The envelope filling event marked the launch of the festival booklet, which was then sent out to venues across the county. You can now pick up a copy from libraries, council buildings, leisure centres and other community venues.

You can view the full events programme and find out more information about activities taking place in your area at www.eastsussex.gov.uk/olderpeoplesday.

The booklet also contains articles and adverts about the support and services on offer from the Council, NHS Sussex, and stakeholders from across the county, and a useful what’s-on guide that aims to link people with groups and organisations that provide one-off events or activities all year.

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Work begins on day surgery unit in Eastbourne

A ground-breaking ceremony was held at Eastbourne District General Hospital to mark the start of building works on a new Elective Care Hub.

The purpose-built day surgery unit will include a pre-assessment area, four theatres, admission, recovery and discharge space plus associated support facilities.

The new elective hub is due to open March 2025. Once open, residents from across Sussex will be able to have their day surgery procedure performed more quickly and in a purpose-built environment.

The new unit is expected to increase the amount of day surgery procedures that takes place across Sussex.

The hub will be open from 7am to 11pm, with procedures taking place from 8am to 6pm, initially five days a week, moving to six days in the future.

The project is a partnership between East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust and partners at NHS Sussex and NHS England.

Find out more about the new hub: Ground broken for new Elective Care Hub at Eastbourne DGH.

What Matters To You: new adult social care strategy for East Sussex

A brand new adult social care strategy for East Sussex has just been launched: ‘What Matters To You: care, support and independence for adults in East Sussex’.

The title reflects the approach taken to developing the strategy: asking people who need care and support, their carers and families, what was important to them to live well. Around 700 local people responded to surveys or came along to focus groups and interviews to share their opinions and help develop the strategy.

The long-term plan sets out what people said, the six key priorities based on people’s feedback, and how those priorities will be taken forward by adult social care.

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The Healthwatch Listening Tour is coming to Rye

Healthwatch East Sussex, the local independent watchdog for health and social care services, is bringing their 2023 Listening Tour to Rye and surrounding villages from 10 to 24 September.

Healthwatch will be talking to as many people across the area as possible about their views and experiences of health and social care services. They would like to hear about people’s experiences of services like GPs, mental health services, outpatients, hospital stays, dentists, pharmacies, occupational therapists, district nurses, care in your home, residential care homes and any other services you have used. 

There’s a broad range of ways to take part, including:

  • Completing the survey
  • Heading along to a pop up stand – find where they’ll be on the Healthwatch East Sussex website
  • Joining a focus group
  • Joining in the conversation on social media – Facebook: healthwatchessusex, X: @healthwatchES, Instagram: healthwatcheastsussex

To keep up to date with the events and find out how you can get involved please visit the Healthwatch East Sussex website.

After the Listening Tour, Healthwatch will: 

  • Share what they hear with health and care commissioners and the local authority 
  • Make recommendations to local service providers to support positive change
  • Champion the view and experiences of local people 
  • Hold decision makers to account 

For more information on the Listening Tour or any of its activities, contact enquiries@healthwatcheastsussex.co.uk or call 0333 101 4007.

Changes agreed to local health and wellbeing services  

We all know the importance of looking after our own health, but sometimes we need a helping hand to begin our wellbeing journey, or even to stay on track. 

To help you, East Sussex County Council will be making changes to the One You East Sussex service, which supports people in addressing a range of behavioural risk factors such as poor diet or smoking and drinking. Welcome to One You East Sussex: Get Back to a Healthier You 

The service will continue to be open to everyone but from 1 April 2024 will take a personalised approach to supporting you to eat well, manage your weight, move more, quit smoking and drink less. This will be based on an individual’s needs, rather than their preferences and will allow the service to focus more of its support on those with the highest needs and who can gain the greatest health benefits. 

The provider will also start to review decisions made about people’s support needs in the early stages to ensure they are correct. This will allow the provider to be flexible around contact methods, how support is offered and meeting individual needs.  

We will also require the new provider to help tackle digital inclusion through the work they do directly with people, and through putting people in touch with other providers. This might include offering skills training, helping people to access technology, and tackling barriers to digital inclusion such as motivation, trust and useability.  

A consultation completed by 120 people identified some clear themes when it came to your concerns. These focused on contact methods, flexibility, and digital exclusion. For the full consultation results visit our website. 

In response to your feedback, we will also make it clearer that the provider will be flexible in how they work with people, with delivering care that meets an individual’s identified needs one of the key principles of the service. 

Our Equality Impact Assessment also identified some actions to help advance equity within the service. These covered gaps in equalities monitoring, provision of online support, ability to access face-to-face support, and receiving limited consultation responses from those with certain protected characteristics.  

Support for refugees and migrants in East Sussex

June 2023 marked the 25th annual Refugee Week, and the international World Refugee Day. East Sussex communities have a proud tradition of supporting all people in need, including migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees who arrive in the county. Here you can read more about the annual awareness campaigns, and about some of the ways local health and care partners are working together to support refugees and migrants in our county, including where to get support.

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Launch of new health and care improvement plan for Sussex

July was a month of milestones as we marked health and care anniversaries and published plans on how we’ll support your wellbeing for the next five years.  

On 5 July we not only celebrated the 75th anniversary of the NHS and the one-year anniversary of our Sussex Integrated Care System (ICS), but health and care partners in Sussex also launched a new five-year improvement plan for health and care.   

The improvement plan, called ‘Our Plan for Our Population’, sets out how the Integrated Care System will work to improve health and care for people across Sussex. 

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