Agenda item

·         Scrutinising Changes to Community Services

·         Scrutinising Equalities and Human Rights Impact Assessments

Context:

We received a report from the Scrutiny Manager in order to consider the guidance for Scrutiny produced by the Older Person’s Commissioner in relation to Scrutinising Changes to Community Services and Scrutinising Equalities and Human Rights Impact Assessments.

Key Issues:

The Older Person’s Commissioner has written to local authorities to present the work that has been undertaken to produce guidance for Councils on how to scrutinise

Changes to Community Services and ‘Equalities and Human Rights Impact Assessments’.

The Commissioner recognises that challenging financial times will present difficult decisions for Councils as to how to provide quality locally accessible services to communities and has produced guidance for local government scrutineers to assist them in their consideration of key decisions and policy affecting older people. The guidance advocates the need for careful consideration of the implications of decisions in order to protect society’s most vulnerable people.

The guidance provides a useful outline for scrutineers in terms of how to apply the principles of the ‘Equalities and Human Rights Impact Assessments’ to decisions and                 policy affecting older people, given the increasing ageing population.

Scrutiny Members may wish to consider how they can embed such principles into their scrutiny approach; possibly through developing a questioning strategy to be applied to scrutiny of relevant subjects, or through considering the robustness of ‘Equalities and Human Rights Impact Assessments’ together with the validity of evidence provided in such assessments to support decision-making.

Member Scrutiny:

The Chair highlighted the opportunity not only to respond but the potential to kick-start and encourage, and suggested that Members should reflect on whether the questions posed make sense, and if the assessments made were fit for purpose.

Whilst the guidance may assume that all authorities have an Older Persons Strategy Coordinator, this is not necessarily the case.  Members expressed concern that without a dedicated post, there may be a reduced opportunity to ensure proper thought is given as to how policy and decisions affect older people. The Chair advised that the scrutiny process therefore needed to ensure that it championed the rights of older people in scrutinising decisions and policy.

The Scrutiny Manager explained that a future meeting of Strong Communities and Adults Select would address partnership discussions.  It was suggested that a future meeting be diarised to consider the role of the different partnerships and how they are coordinated.

The general conclusion was that assessments needed to be more robust and better scrutinised.  In terms of assessments, the Policy officer for Equality suggested that when considering decisions, scrutineers may wish to consider who the decision affects and the evidence that supports whether there ae positive or negative implications for older people.   Members could consider at which stage different groups and services users had been consulted.  There could also be more detailed questions regarding the aims of the proposal.  This would help to achieve more informed scrutiny.  The Scrutiny Manager would look to create a template and bring to a future meeting.

The Scrutiny Manager suggested that the Committee may in certain instances, wish to consider retrospective scrutiny to ascertain whether the anticipated implications on certain groups had actually occurred and how these could be minimised.  The Policy Officer for Equality advised that having dealt with EQIAs, the assessments had been unsuccessful as a result of a lack of information.  Whilst officers had tended to fill the forms in at the last minute, they were being encouraged to think about the questions at the start of the process and that as a result, assessments were improving. The lack of data upon which to predict implications remained and issue and was not improving as quickly as it should. 

A question was raised as to how the EQIAs were applied to non-statutory obligations, in particular, if services were transferred to Town and Community Councils.  The Equality Policy Officer agreed that statutory and non-statutory services should still follow the same EQIA process and that the implications should be discussed as part of the EQIA process prior to the decision to transfer services. 

The Chair queried instances whereby a decision has been taken to offer a service to a Town or Community Council which then rejects the service transfer, the process for the EQIA ~ It was agreed this should be discussed with Head of Legal.

Recommendations:

The report recommended that the Committee:

      i.        Draw formal conclusions to be included in a Council response to the Older Person’s Commissioner;

     ii.        Consider how it can embed the principles outlined in each guidance paper into scrutiny practice; whether through the scrutiny of the ‘Equalities Impact Assessments’, or through lines of questioning and/or other scrutiny activity.