Agenda item

To receive the report.

Jon Padfield, Service Manager – Policy, Performance and Assurance – Adult Social Care, presented the report. He highlighted the data around front door demand for ASC, overdue care act assessments and reviews, unmet care home needs, CQC inspection outcomes, care provider contract ‘handbacks’, intermediate care flow, and stakeholder feedback.

During the discussion, the following points were raised and responded to:-

• We are currently awaiting a CQC assessment as a local authority, is that likely to be long?
  • We don’t know when exactly – but they have already done several in the South West and North Somerset is going to be done at Christmas. We are hoping we will get notification soon. We are ready for it.
• Would be very interested to hear more about the staff survey?
  • This was a council wide staff survey – a temperature check of staff morale. There was some analysis in the report about how ASC compares to the wider council. There were real positives in terms of staff being proud to work for ASC. Plan is that corporately there will be a follow-up staff survey in the spring.
• Really good to see improvements in unmet need and care provider contract ‘handbacks’. Was there a post-covid effect in that?
  • There are several factors – we have supported international recruitment for homecare. If we can get the career pathway right we will see more coming in.
• CQC inspection outcomes – how recent are those inspections? Failings have been pointed out at CQC, how much does that apply to us and our providers? Can we include information on how valid/recent inspections are?
  • We know that CQC hasn’t necessarily gone back to those that required improvement, so they asked us for a list of those to come back to. Because we do quality audits we have sent a list of those we think have improved – because it is impacting their business.
• For international recruitment, are we making best use of the people brought in? Are many overqualified and do we monitor that?
  • No – people come because they want to do the role and are managed by the organisation that sponsors them. We do have international recruits in social workers, we help them continue to grow their careers in Somerset.
  • The higher risk for us is that they go to the NHS who can pay them more.
• For practice quality audits (page 45) – we are amber on three of those. Concerned about communication between parties regarding personal budgets and mental capacity act assessments. What steps are we taking?
  • These findings are reported to our practice quality board. In the three that are amber, the predominant factor was that there wasn’t clear evidence – so the theme is around case recording. This week is our ‘Carnival of Practice’, a learning and development week. One of those elements is case recordings.
  • MCA is addressed in the safeguarding report, 85% is very good and we are doing work around communication. Anything that is amber we have a plan for how we do that and how do we support our staff.
• So next time these will all be green?
  • It is never going to be all green. If it is all green we are not assessing in an appropriate way.
• Relating to handbacks: my understanding is that those were distorted due to one provider. What can we do to prevent those handbacks and the cost in the market?
  • The main reason for handbacks – 50% – is staffing or provider capacity. This includes if a provider ceases to trade. 2^nd reason is client/service-user behaviour, 17% of handbacks, where the provider feels they are no longer able to work with that person.
• There is a slight increase in telephone calls. Full council heard that complaints across the council have trebled. Has ASC seen a big increase?
  • No, we haven’t seen an increase. We do what we can to resolve when people get in contact.

The Chair thanked officers for the presentation and the Committee noted the report.