Agenda and minutes

www.swansea.gov.uk/disclosuresofinterests

Cllr Chris Holley and Tony Beddow declared a personal interest.

No declarations were made.

To receive the minutes of previous meeting(s) and agree as an accurate record.

The Panel agreed the minutes of the meeting on 16 December 2020 as an accurate record of the meeting.

Questions must be submitted in writing, no later than noon on the working day prior to the meeting.  Questions must relate to items on the agenda.  Questions must be dealt with in a 10 minute period.

No questions were submitted by members of the public.

Dave Howes, Director of Social Services

Dave Howes, Director of Social Services attended to answer questions on the Performance Monitoring Reports for November 2020. 

Adult Services

·         Emergency Respite and Emergency Day Support – In normal circumstances would be offering day service to 600 people at any given time.  Initially had to stop this service, then re-modelled to have emergency respite offer for most vulnerable.  Have managed to offer a maximum of a quarter of this and have had maximum take up. Approaching Christmas had to stop this service for a short period but started back up again in January.  Currently offering support to approximately 150.  As a minimum, the Service will be staying in touch with these individuals and some are getting limited support at home.  Compared to the rest of Wales, in Swansea the position is a very good one. 

·         Review of Allocated Clients – Planned review work is currently extremely limited.  Actively de-prioritised this work. Pleased with the number have managed to do as the review process is being used, with some limitations, to identify the support offering re Mental Health.  For reviews around Older People, there is a specific team with annual review function; focussed on most challenging.  In Learning Disabilities, structural changes have not been made to the service; this would have been the day service offer but capacity exceeds ability to provide this service.  Individuals are being contacted on weekly/two weekly basis to check in.

There are no plans to improve this during the second wave just to keep going with what is currently being done.  The Service is trying to recruit and the additional capacity recruited will be kept on until after the current crisis to try and catch up. 

·         Adult Services Staff Testing - Much lower take up of testing in our area currently, concerned this is giving an artificially low figure for cases in our area.  Not concerned about the turn-around time currently. Dilemma about how much we will use bilateral flow tests.  Current priority is getting vaccination roll out completed. 

Child and Family Services

·         Assessments Completed Within 42 Days – The Service was concerned about assessment performance.  There has been an improvement for the last couple of months.

·         Monitoring of Direct Work Performance – Service improvement in the Paris system is currently on hold.  Implementation is planned for next month and the Service will be continuing with it, as think will have substantial benefit from it.

·         Youth Justice System Service – This has been impacted by the pandemic.  Currently seeing significant improvement around timing of assessments.  All policies are in place that were missing at time of inspection; and the workforce has been upskilled.  Despite the pandemic, on track with performance measures.

·         Supervision across Children Services – There are some issue.  Not sure if some teams have the right balance around staff supervision and supervision of performance.  Head of Service is revisiting this for some teams as greater emphasis is needed on staff wellbeing.  Measures are in place to try and mitigate this. 

·         Panel noted a small increase in number of children on the At Risk Register.  Queried if expect a further increase as schools go back and how much of this is linked to domestic abuse.  Officers confirmed last time schools went back there was not a massive increase at the ‘front door’.  In terms of safeguarding, arrangements in place whilst schools off are proving to be robust and at levels would expect them to be.  Could see further increase for number of reasons including domestic abuse.  Officers think the ability of Children’s Services to work with families is currently limited because of the pandemic, and therefore the effectiveness of some of the interventions is being compromised.  Therefore children are staying on child protection register longer, plus there are new concerns being picked up.   However, numbers are still only slightly above level would expect. 

Clive Lloyd, Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Community Health Services

Elliott King, Cabinet Member for Children Services

Dave Howes, Director of Social Services

Clive Lloyd, Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Community Health Services; Elliott King, Cabinet Member for Children Services and David Howes, Director of Social Services attended to present an update on the current situation regarding the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Discussion Points:

·         Cabinet Member for Adult Services - Christmas and start of January was a very difficult time.  Rapid response team had to go into care homes on a number of occasions to assist, but no residents had to be moved out.  Reduction in infection rates welcome but this is not reducing pressures on our services currently.

·         Cabinet Member for Children Services – Service is resilient and coping. Very positive sign.  Managing to balance the demand and staff absence. There is ongoing work with early help hubs and education.  Assessments are much improved.  Child Protection Register numbers are slightly up and there is ongoing work to look into this.

·         Director of Social Services – We are still 3 times over positivity rate when WHO recommended control measures were put in place. The Service put in place everything learnt from first wave.  Staff are exhausted – still have significant levels of staff having to isolate, many have caring responsibilities and they are dealing with more complex cases.  Amazing the Service has been able to keep going; it still remains extremely fragile.  Having to go into care homes in a critical position, along with health, for periods of time as well as maintaining our services. We remain particularly impacted around Domiciliary Care.  We are providing a Covid response, which is far from ideal. It is also a big ask on individuals in our communities who are having to take on such a lot.  The target in our region is to vaccinate the top 4 tiers by mid-February; a challenging timetable.  We have sufficient vaccine for all these cohorts. The Health Board is leading vaccination programme but the Council is supporting it.  It is a massive programme.  Enormously impressed how the Health Board has worked with partners.

·         Set up of Rapid Response Team signifies change in relationship between Health and Social Care. Panel queried number of people involved in the rapid response team.  Requested figures be provided at a future date.

·         Improvement in relationship between Health and Social Care during pandemic is positive.  Another potential positive development in relationships would be if support programmes for staff in both organisations could be jointly negotiated, with staff in both organisations coming together to share experiences.

·         Looking at services post-pandemic, the integrated working undertaken during pandemic provides a model of how we should rebuild our health and social care services.

·         Cabinet Members, Director and Panel Members praised the workforce for what they have achieved.

·         Panel felt there would be a need for ongoing support for Health and Social Care Staff in future to aid recovery and wellbeing.  This should be added as an item to the Adult Services Panel work programme. 

Actions:

·         Figures for number of people involved in Rapid Response Team to be provided to Panel when convenient.

·         Add ‘Support for Health and Social Care staff’ to Adult Services Panel work programme.