RESIDENTS had the chance to help shape a new elderly home care programme.

Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group held an informal engagement session at Oswestry Health Centre on the Closer to Home Service.

The aim is to help over 65s receive health care in the community and possibly avoid a hospital stay.

Barrie Reis-Seymour, commissioning and redesign lead for out of hospital integration, said: “There’s definitely an appetite there for services to be nearer to where people live; transport seems to be a recurring theme.”

His colleague Pete Downer said that feedback had been largely positive.

He said: “Largely, the people I have spoken to have given some quite positive feedback actually.

“But what is also quite interesting is that many people talk about possibilities for how things could be different – there’s a real appetite for that as well.

“It’s almost as if it’s not been considered by a lot of people, possibly because culturally maybe it’s not been seen as a possibility.

“But certainly there seems to be a real ‘that would be wonderful’ response when you ask people about certain things that we’re looking at introducing as part of this programme of work – so it kind of feels like we’re pushing on an open door, which is positive.”

Trevor Upshall, 79, who lives near Oswestry, attended the engagement session.

He said: “I’ve only heard a small amount but I’m quite impressed. We need to discuss and talk about things.

“I think if everything got together and discussed these things I’m sure a lot of them could be solved because there’s no problems with the finance – I think it’s just the bureaucracy that gets in the way.”

Health representatives also took public feedback at a similar event held in Bridgenorth.

Dr Jess Sokolov, clinical lead for the Shropshire Care Closer to Home Project, said before the session that the GPs and health and social care partners had already been consulted about how best to work together to avoid unnecessary hospital stays and provide care at patients’ homes.

She said that home care improved patient recovery and added: “We are now holding these two pilot events and want to speak to local people for their feedback as we are at the very early stages of developing how the service could possibly look in the future.”