The Elderly People's Integrated Care System
The Helen Hamlyn Foundation (HHF) was inspired by the On Lok project in San Francisco, an organisation funded from private, state and federal resources to enable older people who would otherwise be in receipt of institutional care to continue living in the community.
The key elements of the On Lok approach include:
- a holistic response to the inter-related needs of older people
- individual care programmes within a multi-disciplined teamwork setting
- the integrated delivery of community support services from a base in a 'day health centre' offering the advantages of a single point of access to services
- a comprehensive delivery of medical, dental, physiotherapeutic and psychotherapeutic services
The HHF adopted these objectives to develop EPICS - designed to operate within the public sector (as distinct from the private sector), and integrate through one point of access all the caring disciplines and the older population.
After extensive research financed by the HHF, the EPICS concept was born in the UK and a number of projects were initiated to illustrate the essential elements of EPICS.