Agenda item

10:45

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 (AS6) and will include detail on self directed support.

Today’s report focuses on the Adult Social Care Information and Advice (and Advocacy) Strategy.

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

The Self Directed Support Task Group is also invited to give its progress update to the Committee as part of this item.

[Task Group comprises Councillors J. Hannaby, S. Hutchinson, L. Sanders and D. Seale].

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

The report before the Committee (AS6) focused on the Adult Social Care Information and Advice (and Advocacy) Strategy.

Mr Alan Sinclair (Programme Director – Transforming Adult Social Care) attended for this item, together with Ms Anni Thompson (Business and Customer Service Manager and Workstream Lead for TASC Information and Advice Workstream).

Mr Sinclair reported as follows:

·        Transition of all existing clients receiving long term support in the community to self directed support had started, with an expected completion date of March 2011.  However, there were still 3,500 clients to be moved;

·        Transferring the required number of people to self directed support by December was proving difficult and was the biggest challenge facing Adult Social Care at the moment;

·        The new Independent Support Brokerage Service had started on 4 October. Although the capacity was good, insufficient brokerage had been purchased to provide for the number of people that were being transferred onto self directed support as part of the accelerated review process. This was because the Brokerage contract had been set up before it was intended to transfer people in a shorter period of time;

·        The new Locality Teams were taking shape to meet the start date of 6 December 2010.  The Locality Managers had been recruited and officers would be confirming the social workers and occupational therapists that would be in post that week;

·        The TASC Team was running a series of Public Information Days on Adult Social Care (Refer report);

·        The Transforming Adult Social Care programme would be ending by April 2011 and handover to business as usual was scheduled for that date. Scrutiny needed to be supporting the Directorate to ensure that there was a “safe pair of hands” for work to be handed over to.

A member of the Committee asked in relation to the current lack of sufficient brokerage for people who were being transferred to self directed support whether the Directorate would be focusing on the “most needy” and whether there would be some people without brokers who would have to set up their own support.

Mr Sinclair responded that brokers would be targeted and that Care Managers would ensure that all other people would be undertaking the brokerage role and supporting people to have their needs met.

Ms Thompson then updated the Committee on the Information and Advice Project.

Key points are listed below:

·        The overall objective is to make high quality information and advice available to all adults and carers who need it;

·        A summary of the Adult Social Care Information and Advice (and Advocacy) Strategy will be placed on the county council’s website;

·        Oxfordshire County Council is the only local authority to have been accredited with the Information Standard and this means that a logo can be put on all publications. The website, leaflets and all other information must also go through the information standard process. All information must have been consulted with users and approved by Communications & Marketing before it goes live;

·        The Directorate tries to go for no cost publications where possible;

·        The Council’s web pages will be topic based in future which means that users will not have to first define themselves as a certain type of client (eg older person);

·        All signposters will be provided with the same information - including the Customer Service Team - and there will be a public information database (the Information Hub). This is a comprehensive directory and one stop solution for online signposting, which will enable officers to aggregate information from partners’ websites with their approval. It will automatically harvest information from other websites and information will be automatically updated as other websites are updated.  Information can be given from the Information Hub at any location;

·        Marketing of the information will be very important so that people know what information is available to them and a marketing plan has been drawn up and will be finalised after Christmas. Meetings will also be taking place with a number of key stakeholders to ensure that they use this information and it will be important to ensure that there is no duplication of information. It will also be important to explore with stakeholders who will take responsibility for advising on a particular subject.

The Committee then noted the Self Directed Support Task Group update and that Councillor Lawrie Stratford is still a member of the Self Directed Support Task Group.

Ms Carter undertook to schedule a programme of Task Group meetings that co-ordinate with the scheduling of this Committee’s meetings.