Agenda item

Scrutiny of the directorate's progress and strategic direction via the Chief Officer's Annual Report.

Julie Boothroyd presented the report and answered the members’ questions with Eve Parkinson.

Challenge:

Has Social Services been badly affected by the ‘Pingdemic’ in recent weeks?

It’s been more of a collateral problem. We’ve had some of it in our own parts of the business but not significantly. What has been challenging is when our commissioned providers have been affected by it, and then we have experienced – in the short term – challenges with handing back or packages not being able to be fulfilled by the independent sector. We have then had to support them, point them in the direction of other services that might be able to pick up, or we have incorporated those into our own.

What’s happening with regard to, for example, someone needing to leave hospital and go into a care home – do they have to take a LFT before they go?

The care home sector has been incredible through this time. The process around hospital discharges is now very rigorous: everyone has to have a PCR within the 48 hours prior being moved to a residential setting, with a period of isolation once they’ve transferred over. The efficiency has improved markedly since the early days. Over the past year, we’ve consolidated some of the relationships with our providers, which includes weekly meetings with them. The guidance has sometimes been challenging, and it can change very quickly. We’ve given a lot of support and direction regarding the hardship fund. Generally, feedback from providers has been very positive. We are seeing a slight increase now in people going into placement. Regarding PPE, we’ve done a sterling job. No one has been left without. We have done regular deliveries to all of the sector (care home and residential). Also, if any of our commissioned providers has run short, we’ve stepped in and supported them. We deliver a huge amount of stuff around the patch regularly.

Are Care At Home providers still using masks and aprons, etc.?

There is no change: everyone is still wearing the same PPE as they have been throughout. Additionally, everyone now does twice-weekly lateral flow testing and weekly PCR, and the residential settings have regular whole-home testing. We have weekly meetings about the residential sector to identify if there have been any incidences, what tracking and tracing needs to do, if any support is needed around infection control, etc.

Who are the ‘providers’ described as the main source of reports in this period?

This is a term for anyone who delivers a service, so it could be independent sector, residential care homes, Llanarth Court (one of our main contributors to adult safeguarding referrals), etc.

There seems to be a discrepancy between some of the figures given. What about the 51% of enquiries dealt with in the first 7 days?

The figures aren’t necessarily meant to total up in a way that is consistent, as some of the referrals into our system get screened out – but, yes, it would be useful for us to either take out the ‘screened out’ figures, or clarify the different numbers and percentages where they subsequently don’t match. We will make that amendment. The 51% is one of those metrics where we need to satisfy a Welsh government target. We think it is an inappropriate one, as it depends on how the system is set up. In Monmouthshire, we have a central safeguarding team but each of our teams that run social work services also deal with safeguarding. Sometimes, pulling that data together to give a proper representative figure isn’t quite recorded properly. Where it says that enquiries haven’t been followed up within 7 days, they will have been after that time. The teams will have their safety plan in place. This is about metric reporting against a data point – each of those will be elaborated on and fully explained for the report to council.

Have we retained or increased recruitment? What are some of the issues?

The section on workforce is not complete but it will be in the subsequent main report. It will cover how many staff we employ, the issues we might have had and are facing now in this sector. The systems and processes that we have developed for recruitment over the past year have been really useful, especially regarding care at home. We have increased our care at home headcount significantly to manage some of the problems in the independent sector, and the demand. Despite recruiting constantly, we still can’t fulfil 1100 hours per week. These are out to ‘brokerage’: people waiting for packages of support or care in reablement and care at home. Much of this is that the numbers have increased but also the complexity of the effect of lockdown on people has increased significantly, hence why we have declared ‘red’ in reablement since early in the year and now also from a care at home perspective. Though we are recruiting as fast as we can, the complexity and numbers grow every week. We have had temporary funding through various streams but our ability to recruit to those temporary posts have been very compromised, partly due to a shortage in the market for various professions and people not wanting to move to a temporary post, rather than a permanent one. We have therefore sometimes had to hand some of the money back and are in a more difficult situation now, in fact, than we were last year.

Does a new formula for recruitment need to be considered, therefore?

From a professional point of view, our retention is quite good. Our rurality and demography can add to the problems in Monmouthshire but shortages in certain occupations is a national problem. It is encouraging that we get interest in our permanent posts. A lot of work is going on into how we improve recruitment and retention, and problems that we have with care at home. One problem we have is with ‘growing our own’ i.e. staff come from outside the county, where it’s cheaper to live. We are considering other options such as microcarers, how to improve the direct payment offer, etc. But it’s hard to focus on how we promote and be proactive in our models and how we deliver when we are in the thick of the frontline.

On the Adults Safeguarding Report, what is the staffing blip in January 2021?

We will need to check this.

Chair’s summary:

The committee agreed the recommendations, and added another to Cabinet: that council reports should include a one-page summary at the start, and provide numbers wherever percentages are given.