Issue - meetings

16.1     The Board considered a report providing an update on the financial position of the East Sussex Better Together (ESBT) Alliance.

16.2     In response to questions from the Board the following key points were made:

·         ESBT Alliance member organisations have in place a number of safeguards to ensure quality and safety of services.

·         The Adult Social Care Department (ASC) quality assurance process includes: auditing case files on individual clients to determine the quality of social workers’ casework and their decision making; conducting multi-disciplinary safeguarding audits; receiving Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspections for directly provided services such as the Joint Community Rehabilitation (JCR) service, Milton Grange, and Firwood House (all of which are rated good or outstanding); and validating the quality of providers within the wider adult social care market that the ASC commissions services from, either through considering CQC inspections, the Support with Confidence scheme, or the recommendations of the ASC Quality Improvement Team. Performance data, including survey response and complaints and compliments data is also monitored. Six-monthly monitoring reports to the Lead Member for Adult Social Care and Health on the impact of agreed savings plans will also be conducted.

·         The CCGs have an internal quality programme led by the Chief Nurse and run by their Quality Team that involves analysing data from multiple sources, including CQC inspections; and conducting quality visits either to check on services flagged as an issue, or to examine best practice that can be rolled out to other services. The CCGs also conduct a quality impact assessment for each of their proposed Quality, Improvement, Performance and Productivity (QIPP) savings.

16.3     The Board RESOLVED to:

1. note the East Sussex Better Together system financial outturn for 2017/18;

2. note the Health and Social Care Commissioning 2018/19 financial position; and

3. note the recovery actions being developed and implemented collaboratively through the ESBT structures.