Agenda item

Medway’s Council Plan 2016/21 sets out the Council’s three priorities. This report summarise how the Council performed in quarter 1 2018/19 on the delivery of the delivery of the priority relevant for this committee: Supporting Medway’s people to realise their potential.

Discussion

The report sets out performance in relation to the Council priority relevant to the Committee – ‘supporting Medway’s people to reach their potential.’ There had been good performance against the indicator for the percentage of long term packages that are placements and work was ongoing to embed the Three Conversations approach in Adult Social Care. This aimed to support people to be independent in their own homes and to reduce the number needing to move to residential or nursing homes.

The uptake of direct payments was continuing to increase. If the current trajectory continued, the target for uptake would be met at the end of the current financial year. The good performance in reducing Delayed Transfers of Care (DToC) attributable to Adult Social Care was highlighted. There had been significant improvement just before Christmas 2017. This had helped the healthcare system to cope with winter pressures with this performance having been sustained since. Medway was now seen as being an exemplar of good practice nationally. Through Better Care Fund (BCF) programmes additional initiatives had been developed to help sustain good DToC performance. This included the procurement of a home care bridging service to provide interim support while an ongoing package of support was being arranged.

A Member expressed concern in relation to performance for settled accommodation for adults with learning difficulties and for people with secondary mental health problems. This had long being an issue for the Council and the Member was concerned that there had not been significant improvement. She also noted that there was little in the Local Plan about mental health or developments to accommodate people with longer term mental health or learning difficulties.

The Assistant Director – Adult Social Care said that there was a focus on addressing all underperformance, particularly regarding clients with learning difficulties in settled accommodation. Extra Care schemes were currently limited to people aged 55 plus but consideration was being given to making future schemes available for younger adults with learning or mental health difficulties. An Accommodation Strategy had been developed to identify gaps in current provision and where additional provision could be developed to meet need.  Work was taking place with a range of providers locally to develop more supported living that would meet the needs of clients with learning disabilities. Work was also taking place to identify people who had needed to move out of Medway in order to obtain suitable accommodation with a view to supporting them to return. There was some mental health funding available to support the homeless. Work was taking place with housing with a dedicated social worker being part of the initiative to support clients with mental health difficulties. There was evidence that there had been good outcomes in the first month of operation.

A Member highlighted the case of a young man, with mental health difficulties, living away from home who had then returned to Medway and had been placed in housing that the young man or his family considered to be unsuitable. It was requested that special consideration be given to people with mental health difficulties when offers of accommodation were made. The Assistant Director of Adult Social Care requested that further details be provided so that he could investigate the individual case. It was also noted that the Transforming Care Programme was supporting increasing numbers of adults with learning disabilities to live in the community and that this was a significant transformation.

The Director of People – Children and Adults Services noted that the Shared Lives scheme linked to the Council’s Accommodation Strategy. Evaluation had suggested that the scheme was doing well but was not currently being fully exploited.

Decision

The Committee considered the quarter 1 performance of the measures of success used to monitor progress against the Council’s priorities.