Agenda item

6.1  Members gave consideration to two papers:

(a) Adult Social Care Transformation Programme

(b) Paper on What is Adult Social Care? originally presented in November.

6.2  The Chair welcomed to the meeting:

Leanne Crook (LC), Interim Deputy Head of Commissioning Adult Services

Georgina Diba, Assistant Director, Quality Assurance, Safeguarding and Workforce Development, Adult Services

Helen Woodland (HW), Group Director, Adults, Health and Integration

6.3  LC took Members through the presentation. It covered: the challenges faced by adult social care in hackney, the vision, meeting challenges through transformation, the transformation priorities, plan for delivery including resident engagement and how we will know if it’s working.

6.4  Members asked questions and the following points were noted in the responses :

(a) The Chair asked whether there was an ‘invest to save’ pot for these transformation programmes or whether it would be case-by-case bid. HW described how the focus was more on using resources in a different and better way.  Finance colleagues were closely involved in it.  There’s a distinction between things they can do locally and broader ‘invest to save’ e.g. better assistive technology. 

(b) A Member expressed concern that the biggest challenge with career pathways in social care was, unlike for NHS staff, there wasn’t one for social care staff.  He also asked how widely the model was partnered and how best practice would be shared.  HW replied that the social worker qualification was a national one but terms and conditions are not national and there was a big step to be crossed between being a front line care worker and becoming a Registered Manager and the challenge was how to stop staff migrating to the NHS where there were better career opportunities. She described how they were using the Neighbourhoods Model and integration work generally to find pathways for people to work across health and social care and described how the NEL ICS will have a Workforce Development group.

(c) The Chair asked about staff retention and staff culture and whether there was an embedded structural problem (because council doesn’t employ them) and what the limitations there were on the council.  HW described the enabling function of the council here and how for example occupational therapists work with home care staff to train and upskill staff within the Homecare providers and to offer reablement services to residents as well.

(d) The Chair asked whether key principles for ensuring staff wellbeing could be written into contracts with providers. HW replied that it depended on what this was. The provider landscape locally was incredibly diverse with some individual firms, some voluntary sector, some profit making and while some things could be included in contracts it depended on the nature of the contract and the service.

(e) JW (Healthwatch) asked whether the ICS fully grasped the issues facing Adult Social Care and also on the issue of patient Advocacy and how that would fit in with the support to residents. HW replied that ICS development was part of the collective responsibility and as members of that system they would seek to influence that development. She added that as time went on they were learning more about each other's challenges and strengths across the ICS patch. The Chair commented that the fact that the new CE of the ICS was an ex local authority CE would be a great benefit.  LC detailed the support to providers. They were having and hosting more forums with providers to share best practice and they had implemented groups with homecare staff for example to feed into Neighbourhood Multi Disciplinary Teams so they can be in the room as an equal partner.

6.5  The Chair thanked the officers for their detailed reports and attendance and added that he would like the Transformation Programme to return to the Commission when it was more embedded so that they could examine what had been achieved.

RESOLVED:

That the report and discussion be noted.