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Congratulations to Torbay Council’s Adult Social Care Commissioning team, who were named Best Commissioner at the prestigious LaingBuisson Awards for the Living Well@Home project.The national awards celebrate excellence and innovation in independent care and healthcare, and recognise best practice in integrating the services.Living Well@Home is a new approach to supporting and caring for people at home and is delivered through a partnership between the Commissioning team, Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust and Mears Group.As well as providing domiciliary care, Living Well@Home also works to develop a more competent and multi-skilled workforce. This means carers provide a wider range of care and support, with training to expand their roles so that they can undertake more complex health and care tasks.This reduces the number of visits and callers to people’s homes, and also increases the time carers spend with their customers, strengthening relationships. This way of working focuses more on the overall wellbeing of the person and helps them to have a more fulfilling life.Councillor Julien Parrott, Executive Lead for Adults and Children, said: “I would like to say well done to our Joint Commissioning Team, led by Head Commissioner John Bryant, and our partners for being recognised for their innovative way of working and providing this much-needed project to our community. By being able to do more, carers can spend extra time with their clients instead of lots of people spending small amounts of time and rushing off. The council, with our partners, are committed to continually working together to develop this capacity within the community. By focusing on providing more care at home, existing community resources are built upon and new ones created. This improves care within our local neighbourhoods, reduces social isolation as well as offering even better work and career opportunities for staff working in this vital sector.”Dr Sonja Manton, Associate Director for Community Health and Social Care for Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Living Well@Home is a significant change in the way domiciliary care is provided for local people. By working this way the potential benefits are important not just for the people receiving the care but for the staff providing more meaningful care as well. The staff will also be able to benefit from on-going training and career development making it increasingly attractive and rewarding work.”Alan Long, Director of the Mears Group said: “The challenges for Health and Social care are immense. The evidence everywhere is that the three main drivers for meeting these challenges are: strong local leadership, the desire to drive real innovation, and a recognition that this is best done through close working with partner bodies. John Bryant and the Commissioning team in Torbay have demonstrated all of these drivers in abundance and I congratulate them for this.”