Agenda item

Report by the Director of Adult Social Care and Health

55.1     In June 2018 the People Scrutiny Committee established a Scoping Board to consider the range of challenges facing the local care market. One of the key areas identified during the scoping exercise were challenges relating to the public’s understanding and expectation of social care.  As a result, the Information and Signposting Review Board was appointed to investigate this area of work.  The People Scrutiny Committee subsequently approved the final report of the Scrutiny Review Board at its meeting in March 2019. The review report was then presented to Cabinet in April 2019 at which time the department produced an Action Plan which commented on how it would seek to implement the recommendations.  

55.2     Tom Hook, Assistant Director for Planning, Performance and Engagement provided the Committee with an overview on progress with implementing the department’s action plan, as summarized below:

·         Recommendation 1: work on this area of activity is being progressed as part of a wider programme linking it to the Channel Shift and Health Integration programmes;

·         Recommendation 2: the social care Green Paper is yet to be published. The latest position is that it will be published ‘in due course’;

·         Recommendation 3: new Adult Social Care (ASC) financial information pages have been drafted, with user-testing scheduled to take place prior to the new website going live;

·         Recommendation 4: the actions relating to this recommendation have either been implemented or are in the course of being signed-off by service managers;

·         Recommendation 5: the ASC website improvement project is co-hosting a Voluntary and Community Social Enterprise digital workshop alongside NHS colleagues in November 2019;

·         Recommendation 6:  where possible the digital project has sought to use NHS Choices content.  However, there have been occasions where this hasn’t been possible.  The department are therefore also working with local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) to link-up its digital offers.  For example, ESCC digital directories have been linked to the GP consultation and Primary Care Network social prescribing projects. 

·         Recommendation 7: all ESCC libraries and community libraries have been added to distribution lists;

·         Recommendation 8: there is ongoing engagement and promotion with both GP Practice Locality Groups and Patient Participation Groups; 

·         Recommendation 9: that work on the technical comparison between ESCIS and 1Space is near completion and the department are working closely with the East Sussex Social Prescribing Project to provide a database solution for a primary care recording system it aims to establish;

·         Recommendation 10: the re-drafted Adult Social Care and Health departmental guide contains guidance to Members on updating and reporting entries on the East Sussex Community Information Service website;

·         Recommendation 11: it has been agreed that social-prescribing will be included in the scrutiny review on loneliness and resilience; and

·         Recommendation 12: the Adult Social Care and Health departmental guidance has been re-drafted and is available on the Councillor’s intranet page to view.

55.3     The Committee discussed progress regarding the implementation of the recommendations set out in the Action Plan, with Members seeking clarification as to why some deadlines had not been met and reassurance about what steps would be taken by the department to address any related delays in implementation.  

55.4    In response the Director acknowledged the delays identified by Members and undertook to provide the Committee with an updated Action Plan as soon as practicable.   The Director also undertook to provide the latest versions of draft documents which are referred to in the Action Plan and which Members had also requested to see.   Members were also informed that the increase in scrutiny activity since June 2018 had helped the department develop its understanding of the significant level of resources needed to support scrutiny projects.  As result, the department recognise the need for future scrutiny review action plans to be clearer in relation to the breadth of work required and the subsequent timescales for delivering recommendations.  

55.5     The Committee RESOLVED to request that the department provide:

1)     an updated action plan with revised timescales for the delivery of relevant recommendations;

2)         where applicable, updates on any actions; and that relevant drafts of working documents be provided to the Committee.