Agenda item

Attending for this item were:

·         Paula Furnival, Strategic Director of People

·         Rebecca Wassell, Assistant Director for Commissioning

·         Kerry McCrossan, Assistant Director for Adult Social Care

·         Cllr Adrian Hardman, Cabinet Member with Responsibility for Adult Social Care

Introducing the report, the Assistant Director for Commissioning explained that progress against the recommendations of the Care Work as a Career Scrutiny Task Group (STG) had previously been reported to the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Performance Board in January 2021, and to Task Group members and the then Chairman of this Panel in February, when this further update was requested.  She explained that this work was mainly around how the Council could champion care work, and was therefore mostly outward looking. Everyone acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic had brought huge pressures on the care industry and potential crises of the sector.

The Assistant Director referred to the progress report at Appendix 1 and highlighted the main points against each theme of recommendation.

Regarding recruitment and retention of care work staff (recommendations 1-5), it had been possible to carry forward the unspent element of the £15,000 budget for communications from 2020/21, and effective use would be made of the remaining £4,137.80. A lot of work had focused on promoting the value of care work to young people and celebrating their value, which had been well received. The ‘I Care Ambassador’ scheme was working quite well which it was hoped would help to dispel the myths around care work. Work to build a closer relationships with Skills for Care and to develop networking opportunities was ongoing.

Exploration of the Council’s influence to enhance terms and conditions of care workers through its commissioning process had been a struggle, with lateral thinking needed, for example to promote the Blue Light card benefit scheme to external providers. The Council’s refer a friend scheme had been relaunched.

Regarding developing the care worker role (recommendations 6-7), work to scale up provision of care worker apprentices had slowed down due to issues regarding funding of Apprentices – whilst the levy could cover the training, the actual employment of the apprentice and creation of the funded roles remained the main issue to overcome, which would have an impact in the wider community. The Team had also met with stakeholders to share ideas for encouraging care leavers into work or skills programmes and it was hoped to have information soon on the success of this.

The Council had delivered a number of training programmes and decisions could now be taken on when to resume the Learning and Development (L&D) Team’s in accordance with covid guidance. Through the new hire incentive scheme, the Council’s Provider social care services had been able to recruit two apprentices when they had only planned to recruit one.

In terms of supporting and celebrating the existing workforce(recommendation 8), a range of work had been able to continue throughout the pandemic, and regarding liaison with education and training providers (recommendation 9), much of this work was carried out by the L&D team.

Looking at evidence of what works well elsewhere (recommendations 10-11) it had been agreed that emulating use of primary data to predict future service need, as seen by the Scrutiny Task Group in Shropshire, would be part of wider digital work as the benefits would be council-wide.

The Chairman invited discussion and the following main points were made:

·         The Officers were congratulated for their work on this very important area

·         A Panel member suggested a further update on the use of primary data to predict future service need would be useful, which the Assistant Director acknowledged

·         When asked whether care workers had been asked about what they loved about their job and reasons for leaving, it was explained that such information was tricky to access from independent employers and may involve personal issues, however the Council was able to look at was wider work on what was good about care work

·         The Cabinet Member with Responsibility for Adult Social Care believed that quite a lot of people saw care work as a stepping stone to wider NHS roles, although those joining at a later stage in their career may be more likely to stay.

·         A Panel member suggested a generic workforce survey could be helpful and highlighted the importance of pay rates

·         The Strategic Director of People stressed the value of the Scrutiny Task Group’s work to the Council, which had helped with developments such as the doubling of the reablement workforce to help people coming out of hospital, achieved through negotiation with the Clinical Commissioning Group.  She agreed that pay rates were low but believed that with the right work, positive work environments were possible.

In terms of actions, the Panel agreed that a further update on progress on evidence of what works well elsewhere (use of primary date to predict future service need - Recommendation 10) would be provided, however in view of the cross-cutting nature of this work, the Scrutiny Officers would suggest this to the appropriate Overview and Scrutiny Panel Chairman/men.