Agenda item

To conduct pre-decision scrutiny on the report and scrutinise the performance of the service area.

Jane Rodgers introduced the report and answered the members’ questions with Diane Corrister, Claire Robins and Cabinet Member Ian Chandler.

Key Questions from members:

·       What can be done to mitigate the vacancies? Are they mostly caused by stress?

·       What factors are causing demand for new adults services?

·       Is “uncertainty owing to the ‘eliminating profit’ agenda” tied to the lack of suitable placements for children?

·       What do you mean by becoming “more competitive as ‘for profit’ providers”?

·       Can you elaborate on the responding to government policy drive?

·       What pressures do the staff see as particularly difficult in achieving the aim of keeping children at home and in their communities?

·       What is your positive learning culture and practice?

·       Why do you see recruitment as being so difficult?

·       How much are the domestic abuse factors rising and do we have a programme of cooperation with schools and teachers for educating the next generation? Can we help to prevent the next cycle of this?

·       What are we doing to increase the percentage of children with in-house foster carers, from 42%?

·       What are we doing to achieve more in-house carers? Do we need a big recruitment drive in Monmouth, as the report says none re situated there?

·       73% of care leavers are in employment – what are we doing to support the remaining 27%?

·       Most of the unmet care hours are in the community, rather than those coming out of hospital – can we be reassured that we are getting the balance right between getting people back home and some needing to be in hospital?

·       What is the current situation regarding physios, occupational therapists, etc.? Are we able to recruit and retain staff?

·       What is the current state of the Care And Repair budget? – ACTION (officers will provide further information)

·       What are the waiting times for the Strong Families team and counselling in schools, and what can be done about it?

·       The inspection report suggested documentation should be reviewed – will the new system coming in be an answer to that?

·       Management oversight, working to principles of the Care Act 2014 – is there an action relating directly to that?

·       Foster carers, utilising local businesses to help with recruitment – have there been enquiries about that? There’s more that we can do to drive recruitment ourselves – utilising community councils, websites, etc.

·       How advantageous is GWICES (Gwent Wide Integrated Community Equipment Service)? Does the Adult Safeguarding team have access to it?

·       Is providing a fair living wage for foster carers something that has been or is being considered?

·       The infographics are very helpful – it would be useful to have the information in a dashboard format at the start of the document

·       It would be useful to reference the remaining percentages when one is given e.g. 73% – what about the remaining 27%?

·       P39, looking ahead to the number of over-65s in the county: in ten years the UK population over 65 will be greater than those under 15, leading to questions about finance and stability. Microcarers and the engagement of volunteers sounds like a very important development in the sustainability of services – it will be very interesting to see how this progresses

·       P47, the number of contacts made in a week and p53, weekly unmet care needs having declined, give an insight to the public of what’s so essential

·       How are we doing relative to other authorities – would it be useful to get objectivity by looking at this?

Chair’s Summary:

Thank you to officers. The recommendations were moved.