Agenda item

Nikki Edwards Executive Director: People and her team to provide the Panel with an overview of the event horizon for Adult Social Care Health and Housing (ASCH&H) and provide guidance how Overview and Scrutiny can help.

Nikki Edwards Executive Director: People and her team provided the Panel with an overview of the event horizon for Adult Social Care Health and Housing (ASCH&H) and provided guidance how Overview and Scrutiny could help.

 

Nikki Edwards, Executive Director: People introduced herself to the Panel and outlined that this was an opportunity for her and her team to share their vision for their respective service areas.  She explained that:

·        Only part of her team were at the Panel, the Children’s team were not in attendance.

·        The People Directorate held two thirds of the council spend and two thirds of the workforce and so formed the bulk of service delivery and also a lot of the risk.

 

In addition to the presentation that had been supplied to Members of the Panel with the agenda, Nikki Edwards, Executive Director; People advised that:

·        When service users fed back, signposting was really important to them.  Her team was trying to be that voice.
The People Directorate Structure Chart had been updated to include:

o   Tessa Lindfield, Director of Public Health

o   Cynthia Folarin, Public Health Consultant, Bracknell

 

Melanie O’Rourke, Assistant Director: Adult Social Care Operations introduced herself.  In addition to the presentation that had been supplied to Members of the Panel with the agenda she explained that:

·        Challenges were around recruitment for Occupational Therapists (OTs) and Physiotherapists and Mental health practitioners.

 

Tony Dwyer, Assistant Director: Mental Health and Out of Hours introduced himself.  In addition to the presentation that had been supplied to Members of the Panel with the agenda he explained that:

·        The Emergency Duty Service (EDS) was 128 hours per week

·        Forestcare was a 365 days a year service

·        Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) covered children

 

Councillor Dale Birch, Executive Member for Adult Services, Health and Housing suggested to Members that a visit to the EDS would be a good idea to see the front line reality of the service.

 

 

Sarah Gee, Assistant Director: Early Help & Communities introduced herself.  In addition to the presentation that had been supplied to Members of the Panel with the agenda she explained that:

·        The early help element of her responsibility was not covered by the slides as this largely was relevant to the Children, Young People and Learning Panel but she does have a remit to support integration and early intervention across all age groups.

·        She was responsible for welfare and housing.

·        Housing was about providing housing advice, to prevent homelessness and intervening as early as possible to alleviate it and to develop housing options when residents were in need. 

·        Bracknell Forest Council owned and managed some temporary accommodation.

·        Downshire Homes had some accommodation they used for homeless households whilst they were being assessed to fulfil the Council’s duty.

·        Her team managed the MyChoice register. 

·        Bracknell Forest had no permanent housing stock and social and affordable housing was provided by housing associations.

 

In response to questions from Members, Sarah Gee, Assistant Director: Early Help & Communities advised that:

·        She was working with Melanie O’Rourke, Assistant Director; Adult Social Care Operations to establish how the Disabled Facilities Grant can be best used to maximise people’s ability to live independently at home.

·        Ellie Eghtedar, Interim Head of Housing or Sharon Warner, Head of Welfare and Housing manage the allocations policy and can advise of specific allocation criteria for disabled residents.

·        Officers plan to respond to the Government consultation on domestic abuse.  The consultation closes on 2 August.  The government is seeking views on their proposals for a new approach to support victims of domestic abuse and their children in accommodation-based services in England. 

·        Community Safety will come into her portfolio.

·        An extra £360,000 has been secured from the government’s Rough Sleeper Initiative Unit (Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government) for the next 12 months to fund a new team to prevent and address rough sleeping in the town as part of a national commitment to eradicating rough sleeping.

·        A key priority for the service is to make homelessness prevention ‘everyone’s business’ so that risks are identified as early as possible.

·        Scrutiny input into the housing strategy to both inform and be part of it at an early stage would be welcomed.

 

 

Thom Wilson, Assistant Director: Commissioning introduced himself.  In addition to the presentation that had been supplied to Members of the Panel with the agenda he explained that:

 

·        The vision of the directorate underpinned everything he did.

·        The focus was to make the best use of the market locally making sure the best quality support was available at affordable prices.

·        On the horizon, the focus was to look at embedding changes and to make sure new ways of working did what they were intended to do.

·        In terms of support from the panel, he asked that scrutiny would keep them on their toes and scrutinise performance, how changes were being received in the community and help set the direction and challenge on the strategy.

 

Nikki Edwards, Executive Director: People advised the Panel that the Public Health function fell within the People Directorate and outlined the role of Public Health in the local council:

• 3 Public Health Domains: Health Protection, Health Improvement, and Healthcare Public Health advice to NHS commissioners (this was about preventing illness, supporting people to live healthier lives and ensuring health and care services were based on good evidence that met the needs of the population)

•        Ensure delivery of Prescribed Public Health Services – Sexual Health, Weighing and measuring of children; NHS Health Check; Public health advice service to the NHS alongside internal to council; Protecting the health of the local population

•        Ensure delivery of Non-Prescribed Public Health Services - Tobacco control and smoking cessation services; Alcohol and drug misuse services; Public health services for children and young people aged 5-19 (including Healthy Child Programme 5-19) Interventions to tackle obesity such as community; initiatives on nutrition; Initiatives to Increase levels of physical activity in the local population; initiatives on workplace health and DAAT service

•        Health and Wellbeing Board support

•        Public health work was underpinned by focus on prevention; collaborative system leadership; a population approach; developing outcomes; and evidence base

 

There was an interim Public Health Consultant called Cynthia Folarin in the Public Health Team.

 

In terms of what was on the horizon, the Panel were advised that:

·        The DAAT service had recently been inspected by the Care Quality Commission (CQC)

·        Bracknell Forest has its own in house DAAT team based locally at New Hope

·        48% of current new users of the DAAT service were working people so this area for vulnerable people needed exploring and preconceived ideas about who is vulnerable needed challenging.

·        Each day, in every class of 30 children, statistics indicated that one child had experienced domestic violence that day.

·        Housing was a vital element that underpinned all other services and the wider system needed to be considered.

 

Councillor Dale Birch, Executive Member for Adult Services  Health and Housing suggested that Panel Members might like to visit New Hope where Jillian Hunt, Head of Drug and Alcohol Service could explain the services offered and is a great evangelist for her role.

 

In response to questions from Members, Nikki Edwards, Executive Director: People explained that:

·        Transition sits within the People Directorate as it has the statutory director of children and adults role and is an area she is constantly looking at.  Budgets for both sit within her team

·        Transition would be a good area for scrutiny to look at.

·        The most recent CQC inspection of DAAT would be a useful document for scrutiny to review.

ACTION:  Kirstine Berry, Governance and Scrutiny Co-ordinator to add the CQC inspection to the Panel forward plan

 

·        Demand on services nationally was rising but which services would see a rise in demand was not a question that could be answered easily.

·        The Conversations model was working and had reduced the legal proceedings to take children into care.

·        Each member of her team was servicing about 40 different boards and groups and had to focus efforts on key areas.

·        12 or 13 families/people could equate to many thousands of pounds worth of care costs with complex needs and high end costs.

·        Her team were working hard to better understand and predict demand.  This was possibly an area for scrutiny to become involved.

·        If Members required training, her team would be happy to support that need

 

The Chairman advised Panel Members that the Quarterly Service Reports would be available in the form of a dashboard, hopefully in quarter 3 of 2019/20 which would assist Members in identifying more up to date performance measure information.

He highlighted the need to look more at strategic themes rather than tactical day to day activity when scrutinising issues and the importance of teamwork and team focus.

 

Councillor Dale Birch, Executive Member for Adult Services, Health and Housing reminded Members that Councillors could get involved to a certain level but could not go down to reviewing files of individual cases.  Scrutiny was not to be used to take up individual casework. 

Consideration should be given to the capacity of officers to respond to scrutiny approaches and any approach must be through the Chairman and follow the right route.

 

In response to questions from Members, Thom Wilson, Assistant Director: Commissioning advised that:

·        People who were in existing accommodation were being looked at to assess if their needs would be met in a number of years if they were in long term care.

·        This work had shown a significant need for learning disability accommodation which would now be considered now vacant posts had been filled.

 

The Chairman agreed with a suggestion from Members that the Panel should look to plan for its activity over the longer term of four years rather than just an annual cycle to enable the panel to demonstrate how they had affected and effected change over that cycle.

He also asked Members to suggest and supply him any subjects they considered required scrutinising which would/could be added to the forward planning cycle.

 

The Chairman gave thanks to Nikki Edwards, Executive Director: People and her team for attending the meeting and their valuable input.