Agenda item

The Cabinet Member with Responsibility (CMR) for Adult Social Care, Director of Adult Services and the Programme Manager responsible for the Adult Services Business Plan had been invited to provide an update on progress to date.

The CMR reported that the Plan was approved at the 15 November 2018 Cabinet and sought to promote independence and prevent, reduce and delay the need for care.  In addition, safeguarding systems would be robust and the Council would actively engage with the provider market to ensure that current and future needs could be met.  He emphasised the need to build community resilience going forward.

The key focus areas of the Plan were to:

·         reduce the number of older and younger adults whose long-term support needs were met by admission to care homes

·         increase the number of people whose short-term support services enabled them to live independently for longer

·         increase the number of older people who stayed at home following re-ablement or rehabilitation

·         sustain the current performance on delayed transfers of care from hospital

·         prevent reduce or delay the need for care.

The Progress made to date was:

·         the strengths-based model (3Cs) had been rolled out across all social work teams who were now co-located with neighbourhood teams and Learning Disabilities Team

·         investment had been made in technology in residential and domiciliary care settings

·         increased social worker capacity in acute settings

·         Market Position Statement had been published

·         Re-ablement and Front Door Review was in progress.

In the ensuing discussion, the following key points were made:

·         The Panel welcomed the Plan and felt that co-locating with Neighbourhood Teams was a triumph

·         The Patient Flow Centre, a multi-agency team who managed discharges from acute settings, was the only one in the Country and would need to be reviewed as to its sustainability given other work being carried out with health economy partners

·         Delayed Transfers of Care (DToC) could be for a number of reasons, such as housing concerns, family disputes over where the next placement should be (more so if the family was self-funding the placement), waiting time for prescriptions or transport arrangements.  The Director explained that not all of the processes helped people to leave hospital as quickly as possible and there was more work to do around this to improve the situation.  Worcestershire, however was above target in this area and the Director would provide the Panel with details from across the West Midlands to compare statistics 

·         A Member felt the Plan and its vision and aims needed to be communicated more widely.  Officers were working with the County Association for Local Councils (CALC) to disseminate information and build future community resilience.  The point was made that CALC did not cover the whole of Worcestershire.  The Director welcomed Members suggestions on alternative ways of communicating the Plan in their area.

·         Nationally, there was a view that people were never too old to become active and locally work was being undertaken to support this view

·         In response to a question about how safeguarding information was shared between children and adult services during the transition process. The Director reassured the Panel that there was effective data sharing between the services and there was a dedicated Young Adults Team with a specific focus for those young people

·         When asked about the relationship with health partners, the Director reported that the relationship with the Worcestershire Clinical Commissioning Groups was robust and productive.  Relationships with providers, such as Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust was also positive, and the Directorate was trying to help the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust in any way they could, including offering more social workers on the hospital sites.  When asked what more could be done, the Director suggested that hospital discharges should always be before midday, ensuring that transport was also in place and never on a weekend as there was no pharmacy

·         The Panel felt that the role of public health, such as walking for health, could be further highlighted in future editions and this was accepted.

The Panel Chairman invited Simon Adams, Chief Operating Officer from Healthwatch Worcestershire to comment on the discussion and the following points were made:

·           Healthwatch Worcestershire welcomed the level of co-production in preparing documents, especially in relation to the recent work with adults with learning disabilities

·           The very clear prevention agenda was also welcomed, however, as already stated, parts of Worcestershire were not represented by Parish or Town Councils and further thought on engagement would be needed

·           In addition, it was noted that as part of the community resilience work, the third-tier councils were not yet engaged with the successful Neighbourhood Teams

·           Although the positive statement on safeguarding was very welcome, it was suggested that more emphasis could be placed on the effects of self-neglect and the work being undertaken on homelessness.

 It was agreed that the Panel would be provided with the following information:

·         A link to the November 2018 Panel discussion on Market position statement

·         Newcastle University video on being active at any age

·         West Midlands figures on DToC

In addition, Members could make suggestions on the best way for officers to engage their communities to share key messages.