10:15
The Director for Social & Community Services will give a verbal update on key issues.
Minutes:
The Director for Social & Community Services gave a verbal update on key issues, a summary of which is given below:
· there was national debate underway in relation to the National Care Service White Paper (Building the National Care Service) which had been published at the end of March and it was hoped that the debate would continue in the new parliament;
· the Personal Care at Home Bill was now an Act. The Government had accepted a delay in implementation until 1 April 2011 if it was to go ahead. This had financial implications for the County Council that would be covered in the monthly monitoring report to Cabinet. The Act would only be implemented if passed by both Houses in the next parliament;
· in terms of the Annual Performance Assessment the Directorate held regular meetings with the Area Manager and a follow up meeting had been held in response to the Inspection that took place last year. The Inspectorate were happy with progress including that made on safeguarding issues. Key statistics supported this as there had been a large increase in the number of referrals and a considerable improvement in the speed of completion of referrals. It was hoped that these improvements would be reflected in the Annual Performance Assessment in December;
· in light of self directed support and the personalisation agenda, information in relation to initial ideas on the future of Day Services for Older People would be provided to this Committee’s June meeting. The Directorate wished to consult with providers and service users prior to discussion with Scrutiny and would be doing this at the end of May. Letters would be sent out that week;
· the Directorate had gained two awards from Improvement and Efficiency South East (IESE): an award for the work undertaken by the Council to support carers who work for the Council and an award in relation to extending the benefits of personalisation to people in residential care homes. Even if people were paying for residential care they were still left with some money which they could use, for example, to be taken out fishing or to visit the hairdressers;
· John Bolton, whilst Director of Strategic Finance at the Department of Health had looked at the use of resources in Adult Social Care in comparison with his visits to other local authorities and had provided the Directorate with positive feedback in relation to its effective use of resources;
· Members would be tasked with agreeing the Resource Allocation System (RAS) for self directed support and would need to agree a budget which led to a fair outcome for all service users. It was important that the budget was not “age biased” ie, there would need to be equity between younger and older adults. The RAS must also be fair to council tax payers in that an appropriate level of resources must be given to both self directed support - neither too much nor too little - and to other services, as doing so would have serious consequences for the Council;
· an information booklet for older people and their carers had been produced which had been approved by Age Concern Oxfordshire and had cost the taxpayer nothing as it was purely funded by advertising revenue;
· Age Concern and Help the Aged had merged nationally to form Age UK. Age Concern Oxfordshire was an independent organisation from Age Concern England (effectively a federated body rather than a national branch) but would be changing its name to Age UK Oxfordshire;
· in terms of NHS Continuing Health Care (CHC) the Strategic Health Authority cited operation in Oxfordshire as best practice. National statistics showed a variation country wide of 10:1. The South East was below the average but was not the lowest region. This huge variation was being discussed by Adult Social Care Directors as there was a need for the consistent application of CHC. Although the Government had issued guidelines last summer these were not being applied consistently nationally.
The Committee thanked the Director for his update and AGREED that this new agenda item was very useful and should continue at future meetings.
Members of the Committee were asked to provide any further feedback on this new agenda item to the Director or via Ms Coldwell.