Agenda item

Context:

Adults Select Committee received a report from the Lead Commissioner QA (Adult Social Care &n Health) & SP Lead Officer, in order to present Members with the proposed developments in the Supporting People Programme Grant funded provision in 2016/17.

Key Issues:

During 2015 the expectation was that SPPG would be cut by anything up to 25%. Therefore a number of cut-management scenarios were worked through. However, in January 2016, the Minister announced indicative local authority allocations that maintained funding levels at 2015/16 levels - £2,039,175 for Monmouthshire

Included in these cut-management strategies was the assumption that Phase II of our SP pricing strategy would be implemented.

Phase I was implemented in 2015/16 and which ensured a consistency across the provision based on the cost per funded support worker. At the same time the principle of only funding support hours delivered was introduced (as opposed to block contracting). The latter implementation generated some clawback opportunities that generated in-year underspends that allowed 2 younger person services to be piloted.

Applying the Phase II strategy, which makes the cost per actual support hour delivered consistent, releases a further £141k for service developments.

Over the last year expectations for SP to link with and/or support other initiatives has increased. There are a range of increased expectations associated with the Social Services and Well-being Act, primarily related to primary prevention and early interventions. Welfare benefit and housing reforms have also increased the incidence of people needing help and support to address their immediate housing issues. The Minister has further called for a closer collaboration between the 3 Tackling Poverty initiatives and SP (Communities First, Families First and Flying Start). There are increased expectations with respect to SP support in domestic abuse and violence situations and in the effective resettlement of prisoners on release.  Monmouthshire already has an effective service provision for domestic abuse and further developments in this area and prison release have been organised on a regional basis via the Regional Collaborative Committee.

Member Scrutiny:

A Member questioned the relevance of including 2013 information in the report.  We were informed that a weakness of Welsh Government proposals for local commissioning plans in the future were that where there was a three year commissioning plan, at the end of the three years the figures the plan had been based on were four years old.

Members requested examples of external providers and questioned how these bodies were scrutinised. We were informed that Monmouthshire Housing provide support for older people, the service had been reconfigured in 2011/12 to meet the needs at that time.  The needs of Monmouthshire’s older people had since changed and we had been clawing money back from Monmouthshire Housing as there was not enough demand for the support hours being providers.  The age group had now been extended to any age group rather than continuing to claw money back.

County Councillor A. Wintle declared a personal, non-prejudicial interest under the Members’ Code of Conduct, as a Director of Monmouthshire Housing.

The Supporting People Lead Officer explained that negotiations were under way and Monmouthshire Housing were very supportive of the approach. 

A Member requested further clarification on the figures in the Spend Plan 2016/2017 in Appendix 2 of the report, and questioned if we were spending nearly as much on domestic violence as learning disability, or were they projected figures.  In response we heard that the spending plan showed we were spending £217,000 on domestic abuse, and £286,000 on learning disability plus access to generic floating support.  In terms of equality impact assessment the advantage of a generic floating support would be fair access for everyone.

The Chair noted that the spending plan was a floating situation and where there were zero figures, it demonstrated a snapshot of time rather than the programme not working for people with those issues.  In future reporting, further explanation may be helpful.  We were advised that in the coming year officers would be able to present what Supporting People had covered and show a much clearer position.

A Member questioned, in terms of mental health issues, how we could encourage GPs to become more involved when assessing housing needs.  We were advised that the approach had been piloted with Mind Monmouthshire, where a support worker would go into a GP practice and work with GPs where there were concerns about individual issues.

The Chair suggested there should be a clear identity/logo in order to identify the scheme within the community, and to ensure people know who they are dealing with.

The Head of Adult Services explained that rather than a logo, the scheme was more about the relationships we develop with people.  The Lead for Supporting People also explained that in the pilot year there would be a number of people in the community providing support.  In time we would look at the system from a service user point of view to understand what is best for them.

Recommendations:

The report recommended that Members consider the main service developments and approve the proposal to complete detailed negotiations with a view to implementing them for 2016/17