Agenda item

This report provides information on the outcome of an assessment by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) on the Council’s Adult Social Care Service.

Discussion:

The Assistant Director, Adult Social Care introduced the report which provided the findings of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) assessment of Medway Council's performance in fulfilling their obligations under Part 1 of the Care Act 2014. She explained that the Council had received a score of 59% which was 4 percentage points from ‘good’ and that this had been the result of intense work to improve the service greatly within the last year. The CQC had fed back that staff were passionate and proud to work for Medway. There had been no surprises, the service knew where it was at and what it needed to work on and an action plan was in place to drive forward continued improvement.

Members then raised a number of questions and comments, which included:

• Training in moving and handling – reference was made to the criticism from providers about availability of moving and handling training. The Assistant Director, Adult Social Care explained that providers were required to deliver training to their staff and the Council’s Quality Assurance Team visited providers to ensure training was being provided and up to date.
• Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) – the Assistant Director recognised this as an area of focus. She explained for some communities they did not want to engage in support from adult social care but then can end up in crisis, therefore promotion of the service, through working with partners, was needed to try to reduce the risk of families finding themselves in crisis. As part of the right sizing of the service, posts relating to engagement had been established and when recruited to, would enable improved out reach.
• Section 42 enquiry back log – reference was made to this and whether this had since improved. The Assistant Director confirmed that additional funding had been allocated to the team to support them with the back log which had been brought down, although there had been a recent increase and this was an area of focus on the action plan.
• Monitoring progress – in response to a question about how progress could be monitored by the Committee, the Assistant Director explained that key performance indicators were aligned with the action plan to help track progress and the Committee could be provided with periodic updates on that. There was the possibility the Council would then be assessed by the CQC again in two years’ time.
• Thanks to the Assistant Director, Adult Social Care – recognition was given to the Assistant Director for her passion and leadership across the adult social care service and for the improvements that had been made to date.
• Profile of adult social care – more work was needed to raise the profile of adult social care and once there was capacity to once the restructure embeds the service could reach out to the community so that they could offer support to those eligible and also to offer information, advice and guidance to those that need it.

Decision:

The Committee noted the rating issued by the CQC and the action plan which addressed the improvement areas identified in the assessment and commended the Assistant Director, Adult Social Care, for her diligence, determination and commitment to improving Medway Council’s adult social care offer.