Report to:

People Scrutiny Committee

 

Date of meeting:

17 November 2022

By:                                           

Director of Adult Social Care and Health

Title:                                                 

Adult Social Care Workforce Update

Purpose:                         

To update the People Scrutiny Committee on progress with measures to address workforce recruitment and retention challenges including the role (and limitations) that Personal Assistants (PAs) have in addressing the workforce challenges.

 

The People Scrutiny Committee is recommended to consider and comment on the content of the update report and appendices.

 


1.            Background

1.1.        The Adult Social Care and Health (ASC&H) Workforce Programme 2022 – 2024 is a three-year programme of work, established in March 2022. The programme will bring together stakeholders to explore ways in which we can improve our recruitment processes and attract and recruit prospective staff into ASC&H vacancies more successfully and efficiently, with a particular focus on hard to fill posts.

1.2.        The programme will share best practice across ASC&H and the wider County Council, as well as external local and national initiatives. The programme will pilot and evaluate a range of creative approaches to recruitment in order to identify the most successful and effective methods for wider deployment across the Department and Council.

1.3.        This report has been brought to the Committee following a request from the People Scrutiny Committee Review Scoping Board, which met in March 2022, to consider ASC Workforce Challenges as a potential topic for a scrutiny review. The Board was updated on the range of activities the ASC&H Department is undertaking in response to challenges with recruitment and retention and concluded that as the Department had just started, or was about to progress, a wide range of work in response to the challenges outlined, it was not an appropriate time to commence a scrutiny review of this area and instead the Committee should receive a progress report in nine months. The Board also requested that the Department re-visit the recommendation of the previous People Scrutiny Review of the ASC Workforce in 2019 that the Department support councillors to promote the role of Personal Assistants, and the briefing and presentation attached at Appendices 2 and 3 are provided in response.     

2.               Summary of progress

2.1.        The ASC&H Workforce Programme structure and governance comprises a Programme Board, chaired by the ASC&H, Assistant Director (Operations), with membership drawn from across the Department and supported by corporate services such as HR and IT. There are six separate workstreams (or Project Groups) with an identified Lead Officer that report to the Programme Board on a regular basis.

2.2.        To date, the Board and has met to review and approve each of the six individual Project Groups’ objectives, priorities, and plans, and the following paragraphs summarise the key achievements to date.

·           A project initiation document has been produced for each project and presented to the Board. This has allowed the Board to discuss any overlaps across projects and agree how to manage shared objectives and areas of interest, as well as identifying any areas of resource that may be required to support each project.

·           Reporting arrangements have been agreed to help the Board monitor progress. Project Groups are listed in the presentation in Appendix 1.

·           All Project Groups are meeting regularly to scope out workstreams, share progress and ideas, agree key milestones and next steps, and implement plans. All groups have achieved some milestones.

·           A Programme Risk Log is being set up for regular review by the Board.

·           A set of Intranet pages has been created to ensure ongoing communication with staff about the Programme and about each of the component projects. The Intranet pages will be updated regularly regarding project progress, with a notification in the regular staff bulletin (To the Point) each time new content is added. The pages also invite staff to contribute their ideas and views to the Programme, through the link below. Adult Social Care and Health Workforce Programme – ESCC Intranet

·           The summer edition of the internal staff bulletin (Brief Encounter) featured a one-page article about the Programme and gave an overview of the six projects and named the project leads. It also invited staff to submit any views to a group mailbox.

·           Consideration of the role and limitations that Personal Assistants (PAs) have in respect of the wider care workforce and a report and separate presentation on this part of the workforce is contained in Appendix 2a and b.

2.3.        As part of the next phase of the Programme, the following activities are planned for the period between October 2022 and January 2023:

·                       Produce and finalise East Sussex ASC Workforce Development Strategy.

·           Ongoing development of individual project plans, setting out key actions and milestones, for each area.

·           Quantify and finalise any potential resource implications for consideration as part of the Reconciling Policy, Performance and Resources (RPPR) process.

·           Maintain the Intranet page updates on a monthly basis.

·           Add, maintain, and review risks identified by Project Groups to a programme Risk Log.

·           Co-ordinate focus groups across the programme, utilising the Departmental Management Team (DMT) November staff engagement events to undertake live polls of staff to identify key priority themes from across all six project leads.

·           Hold equalities, diversity and inclusion themed workshops with project leads to understand what actions/mitigations may be required in the Programme’s equalities Action Plan.

·           Develop an internal and external Communications Strategy for the Programme.

 

3.            Conclusion and recommendations

3.1.        Our workforce and that of the independent sector, are fundamental in supporting East Sussex residents to live fulfilling and independent lives. It is necessary and timely to consider our long-term workforce requirements supported by detailed workforce planning to enable us to increase capacity necessary to ensure that we have sufficient staff with the right skills and knowledge to meet the anticipated increase in demand.

 

3.2.        The ASC Workforce Strategy will build upon that ambition and implement the initiatives set out in the ‘People at the heart of care’ white paper which will contribute to laying the foundations necessary to stabilise our essential workforce.

 

3.3.        The People Scrutiny Committee is recommended to consider and comment on the update contained both within this report and the presentation.

 

MARK STAINTON

Director of Adult Social Care and Health

 

Contact Officers:

Leigh Prudente, Assistant Director (Operations) Leigh.Prudente@eastsussex.gov.uk

Sara Lewis, Head of Service ASC Training, Workforce and Organisational Development Sara.Lewis@eastsussex.gov.uk