A LANDMARK county council-led social care scheme has become the very first to be funded by national charity the Health Foundation.
Prosper, tipped to be a "beacon project" for the rest of the UK, was launched at Essex County Council HQ following the £450,000 grant.
The two-year pilot scheme will train carers from across 21 residential homes in how to help reduce the number of elderly people being admitted to hospital over avoidable hazards.
Cabinet member for adult social care Cllr Anne Brown said too many residents were being taken out of homes and to hospital with pressure ulcers, catheter infections and after falls.
She stressed the need to "improve" the service on the back of bad press.
Earlier this year the authority placed the Old Deanery care home in Braintree in special measures after covert filming revealed evidence of abuse.
Cllr Brown said: "Our ambition is for innovation to change the way carers work in care homes and improve the services for all people in our care.
"The Prosper project is an example of how social care, health and the independent sector can work in co-operation to bring significant improvements.
"We need and must have improvements in the safety and wellbeing services for our frail and vulnerable residents to live well in homes."
Cllr Brown said the council's safeguarding portfolio was so big there were bound to be "some things that were not right".
About 25 per cent of the county council's annual budget is ploughed into safeguarding residents at 700 care homes.
She said: "There is always room for improvement and we would not have had the Old Deanery if we were perfect, but in that Panorama programme they did not criticise Essex County Council but did criticise Croydon council during recordings of a care home there, so we must have been doing something right."
The Health Foundation gave the project, partnered with London-based academics UCL Partners and the care homes, the grant after whittling down 109 applications to ten.
A total of £250,000 is being used to implement the scheme, which includes training, while the remainder will pay for UCL Partners to find out if the project is successful.
North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Group director of nursing and quality Lisa Llewelyn said carers would be encouraged to identify the causes of infections and ulcers, be it for example alterations to medicine or an increase in fluids.
Ms Llewelyn said: "These are causing admissions and people are ending up in hospital when the best place for them to be cared for is in the home, so let's prevent that from happening.
"You don't want to take people who are vulnerable out of their care setting."
Mike Roberts, of UCL Partners, added: "I don't see why this won't be a beacon project for Essex over the next two or three years."
