Agenda item

10:15

Contact Officer: Lisa Gregory, Taking Part Team Manager, (01865) 323605

This Committee has agreed as part of its scrutiny work programme that it wishes to look at the new statutory duty to involve, which will affect all parts of local government, not just Social & Community Services.

Ms Gregory (Taking Part Team Manager), together with Ms Carole Stow (Consultation and Involvement Manager) will attend for this item in order to provide information to the Committee on what this new duty involves and what the Directorate will be doing in response to this, and to answer the Committee’s questions.

A report is attached atAS5.  

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

This Committee had agreed as part of its scrutiny work programme that it wished to look at the new statutory duty to involve, which will affect all parts of local government, not just Social & Community Services.

Ms Gregory (Taking Part Team Manager), together with Mrs Carole Stow (Consultation and Involvement Manager) attended before the Committee in order to provide Members with information on what this new duty involved and what the Directorate would be doing in response to this, and to answer the Committee’s questions.

Mrs Anita Higham and Mr Dermot Roaf (Oxfordshire LINk), together with Mr Adrian Chant (LINks Locality Manager – Help and Care) also attended before the Committee.

The paper before the Committee (AS5) set out the background and key issues associated with the Duty to Involve, the arrangements in place to support the Council to meet its statutory obligations; and in particular how Adult Services was meeting its statutory obligations.

Mrs Stow reported that the duty came into force on 1 April 2009 under section 138 of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health (LGPIH) Act 2007. Its aim is to embed a culture of engagement across local government and it requires the Council to take steps to involve representatives of local persons in the exercise of the Council’s functions where it is considered to be appropriate. However, the Council had long recognised the benefits of involving service users and the ethos of the duty already underpinned the Council’s strategic frameworks and was integral to its corporate plans, strategies and processes. Mrs Stow further reported that as the County Council’s Consultation and Involvement Manager she had the strategic overview of all of the Directorates and each Directorate has nominated an officer responsible for have an oversight of consultation and involvement activities in relation to that Directorate. Information resulting from consultation activities was then fed to her to enable her to share widely.

Ms Gregory reported that the Taking Part Team existed to support staff and enable them to strengthen service user involvement, for example, by providing examples of best practice. She added that it was very easy to get involvement wrong and therefore it required specialist knowledge to get it right. Involving service users at an early stage resulted in better services and happier service users. Although consultation had been undertaken in Social & Community Services for many years it was now co-ordinated centrally to ensure that work was not replicated across Directorates.

In relation to a Member’s question, Ms Gregory responded that she managed the Oxfordshire LINk contract, as LINks were part of the wider duty to involve. The Team might flag up an area of interest to them, but as LINks were independent of the Council it would not be appropriate to instruct or request them to carry out any activities.

Mrs Higham stated that her task was to implement the legislation with regard to the Oxfordshire LINk. She added that the Duty to Involve enshrined the principle that the public sector had to look at the quality of service it was providing and consider whether the tax payer was obtaining value for money and whether public sector staff were trying to look at what is was like to stand in the service users’ shoes, as people did in the private sector. This was complemented by the November 2007 legislation that had asked how did service users really experience services from the cradle to the grave. The Oxfordshire LINks’ task was to ask service users what it was like to be on the receiving end of services.

Following the brief question and answer session the Committee thanked both officers for attending and AGREED that it wished to have sight of the quarterly reports thatwere going to be submitted by each of the Directorates in future, together with Mrs Stowe’s audit report.

Ms Gregory undertook to circulate the information to be placed on the Council’s consultation portal to all members of this Committee.