Issue - meetings

35.1     The Board considered a report on the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) Local Area Review Report and the implementation of an Action Plan developed in response to it.

35.2     In response to questions from the Board, officers made the following key points:

·         The CQC has identified as an area of improvement the need for an up-to-date Comprehensive Needs Assessment for older people to form part of the East Sussex Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA). This will be actioned, however, the existing JSNA does  include the relevant information in relation to older people but it is presented differently. The approach currently taken is to produce JSNA Indicator Scorecards based on CCG or Local Authority areas that contain a wide range of indicators for that area including those for older people, as well as for population, income, education, housing, crime and deprivation.

·         The East Sussex Health and Wellbeing Board (HWB) will be responsible for ongoing oversight of the Action Plan. A lot of the work identified in the Action Plan is already underway and will be undertaken using existing resources, however, some additional capacity will be needed in order to manage the overall delivery of the Action Plan.

35.3     The Chair thanked all those who were involved in the CQC inspection, which had published a report that was better than could have been expected. The Chair welcomed the fact that the CQC recognised the good work being delivered in East Sussex so far and was reassured that officers would continue to deliver services despite the enormously challenging financial situation. He believed that the Action Plan was deliverable and that the HWB would monitor its implementation.

35.4     The Board RESOLVED to note the report detailing the outcomes of the CQC Local Area Review report and corresponding action plan.