Agenda item

12:30

Contact Officer: Alan Sinclair, Programme Director – Transforming Adult Social Care, (01865) 323665

It has been agreed that a report on transforming Adult Social Care will be brought to every meeting of this Committee (AS8) and will include detail on self directed support.

The Cabinet Member for Adult Services and Mr Sinclair will attend to answer any questions the Committee may wish to ask.

The Committee is invited to track progress and conduct a question and answer session.

It had been agreed that a report on Transforming Adult Social Care (TASC) would be brought to every meeting of this Committee and would include detail on self directed support.

The Committee had before it a progress update in relation to TASC (AS8), together with the Putting People First Milestone Self Improvement Framework (Oxfordshire’s first quarterly report to the end of December 2009 on progress against the government’s high level measures and milestones which need to be achieved over the next 18 months and which will be reported on a quarterly basis to the Department of Health for all Councils) (Annex 1) and the Programme Definition Document for Transforming Adult Social Care with an updated risk register (Annex 2).

The Cabinet Member for Adult Services, together with Mr Alan Sinclair (Programme Director – Transforming Adult Social Care) and Mr Steve Thomas (Performance Information Manager) attended for this item in order to answer Members’ questions.

Mr Sinclair summarised progress in relation to TASC as set out in report AS8, reporting as follows:

·        in relation to the need to better involve and engage with the Districts and the City Council, there was a need for more information on TASC to be provided by the City Council and he would be attending a meeting of the City Council’s scrutiny committee that evening;

·        although there was already much work underway in relation to the financial systems needed to support the delivery of personal budgets, more was needed to be done as the systems were not yet in place. Plans were in place to do this but they needed to be implemented;

·        three hundred people had now been allocated a personal budget;

·        the programme would be going into delivery stage this year (all new service users to have a personal budget by October 2010) and his concern was to ensure that the system was sustainable for the future in terms of local commissioning. Altering commissioning and contracting arrangements to enable providers to offer choice and flexibility had been limited to date in relation to older people and people with physical disabilities. In relation to the extent to which users, carers, providers and third sectors had been involved in developing the commissioning strategy, the involvement of service users was more developed in learning disabilities and mental health and was beginningto happen for older people and people with a physical disability. Officers were currently working on the strategy for people with a physical disability;

·        officers had now gone out for an expression of interest for brokerage;

·        the Resource Allocation would be discussed at a Workshop to be held in March;

·        the future of the community building aspect of the programme would be discussed by the end of March;

·        there was only a year’s funding left for TASC so officers were looking at what they needed to be prioritising, for example, by looking at what they could do in relation to community building, promoting independence and prevention in the last year of the programme.

A selection of the Committee’s questions, together with Mr Sinclair’s responses, is listed below:

·      Did the people who were part of the accelerated review process and transferring to a personal budget understand what the Directorate was trying to do, why they had received a smaller budget and why this was acceptable?

Mr Sinclair undertook to circulate a summary paper to the Committee’s next meeting summarising comments from the people who had been reviewed for self directed support and had received a personal budget, giving information on their understanding of the process, their views and the outcomes.

·      How could safeguarding be addressed in terms of brokerage, especially as members of the family did not need to be registered?

Officers were doing a joint piece of work with the Safeguarding Adults Board on safeguarding and self directed support which covered how people would be supported universally through the process, together with targeted support for people that were being abused. This would be taken to the TASC Programme Board and the Safeguarding Board. Officers would also be encouraging people to use brokers that were contracted by the Council although it would not be mandatory.

·        What was happening in terms of community building and who was responsible for it?

The Head of Community Services was responsible for community building and this part of the programme has been one of the least developed areas. Officers were interested in looking at areas of good practice both within and outside of the county in terms of what makes a community work well for people that are vulnerable. Some work had been undertaken in the South East which had focused on small projects and areas, but it had not looked at how the whole community could support vulnerable people.

·        Under ‘Upcoming key dates for the programme’ the report stated that by April 2011 existing and new eligible people would have a personal budget. Under milestone 2 it stated that the target for April 2011 was for at least 30% of eligible service users/carers to have a personal budget. When would this number increase to more than 30%? Under this milestone it also stated that self directed support and personal budgets would go mainstream for May 2010, but if officers worked on a 3% increase on a quarterly basis the target would still be 6% short by April 2011.

All eligible service users/carers would receive a personal budget by April 2011. The 30% target had been set by the Department of Health. This target also counted a number of different groups as service users, who in reality would not be eligible for a personal budget. The Directorate interpreted the target as all eligible service users.

·        With regard to Milestone 4 (Information and Advice) was there a strategy in place to create universal information and advice services?

There was not at present but a strategy would be in place by April 2010. The risk related to how the strategy was implemented. The standard of information provision in adult social care had historically been poor and therefore problem areas needed to be improved. Some of those risks had been quite high. The mitigation action related to how the strategy would be implemented.

·        If officers were told to make more rapid progress and implement TASC by the end of this month, what progress could be made?

The roll out of personal budgets county wide could not be carried out by the end of the month.

·        How quickly could personal budgets be rolled out?

     There was a difference between doing this well and doing it quickly. Twelve thousand people were currently in receipt of services from adult social care. Five hundred of these service users would be reviewed by the end of March. Therefore, it might in principle be possible to review everyone by the end of June or July. However, to do so would mean that all adult social care staff would have to solely focus on this task to the detriment of other important work such as safeguarding and responding to emergencies. Rolling out personal budgets too quickly could also put vulnerable people at risk as they might not have been allocated the right amount of money.

The Committee thanked Mr Sinclair for his informative update and also noted that an analysis of the potential impact of free personal care on the Transforming Adult Social Care programme would be undertaken shortly and would be reported to this Committee’s next scheduled meeting.