Agenda and minutes

Liz Jordan, Scrutiny Officer

Susan Jones was appointed as Convener of the Panel.

www.swansea.gov.uk/disclosuresofinterests

Disclosure of interest – Chris Holley.

No declarations were made.

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

The Panel agreed the minutes of the meeting on 13 July 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 will be dealt with in a 10-minute period.

No questions were submitted by members of the public.

Amy Hawkins, Interim Head of Adult Services

Helen St John, Interim Head of Integrated Community Services

Amy Hawkins, Interim Head of Adult Services briefed the Panel on the performance monitoring report for August 2020.  Clive Lloyd, Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Community Health Services and Dave Howes, Director of Social Services also attended for this item. 

Discussion Points:

·         Day service support and respite re-established on emergency basis only, as seeing increased demand.

·         Health Board no longer reporting on Delayed Transfers of Care.  Welsh Government relaxed recording of a number of measures due to Covid -19 pandemic. Reassurance provided that there is a big focus on the Service’s monitoring and reporting of demand and flow through health and social care system via variety of routes.

·         Residential Care for Older People – Panel has not seen data from March 2020 to the present day. These figures to be included in a separate report to come to the Panel as soon as possible, on ‘Effects of Covid-19 in residential homes and actions taken.’

·         All Health and Social Care is under extreme pressure.  It is more problematic with the second surge of the pandemic. 

·         Panel queried how contracts entered into with private sector are performing.  Informed a lot of work has been undertaken with commissioned services on access to PPE and support for testing.  Also supported in administering WG hardship fund and daily with statistics.

·         A positive from the pandemic is that it has raised the profile of work carried out by health and social care workers, which will, hopefully, lead to recognition and the right career paths and terms and conditions. 

·         Common Access Point - Seeing increasing complexities of inquiries through the ‘front door’ as people who had just about been coping are now reaching crisis point. 

·         Department will increase capacity to deal with second surge of pandemic by the restructure of the Service and putting in resources, recruiting to all vacancies to try and increase capacity in terms of support, focussing on statutory requirements in terms of what they have to do and being flexible.  Senior management team working with Health Board to put in place a contingency plan if there is a super surge. This has been negotiated with trade unions.

·         Domiciliary Care – Before pandemic it was running at capacity for internal and external providers.  Should be able to cope if domiciliary care needed over and above this as just before pandemic two new providers were contracted.  Reasonably comfortable at the moment, but this is being tracked.  Confirmation to be provided on whether new providers are ones that had previously tendered and been turned down. 

·         Query raised about capacity of testing when leaving hospital.  Confirmed, people admitted to a closed setting/care home, whether from the community or hospital have to have had a negative test.  If admitted to community domiciliary care have to have had a negative test. This adds time onto the process of transfers of care. For general public, it is not a requirement to have a negative test before being released from hospital.

·         Query about mental health and if any additional services have been put in place since the pandemic started.  In terms of immediate response, community mental health team is still working with people engaged with the Council’s services.  For people not engaged with the Council’s services, the Department is working with Swansea Council for Voluntary Service to ensure all information on provision available in terms of open access is up to date.  As part of regional response work, there is a group looking at the strategy for mental health going forward.  Public advised to link with the Council’s partners especially the Third Sector.

Actions:

·         Add item ‘Effects of Covid-19 in residential homes and actions taken’ to work plan as soon as possible  

·         Confirm number of vacancies being recruited to and whether full or part time

·         Confirm if two new providers of domiciliary care had previously tendered and been turned down.

Amy Hawkins, Interim Head of Adult Services

Helen St John, Interim Head of Integrated Community Services

Amy Hawkins briefed the Panel on sickness levels in Adult Services and answered the Panel’s questions. 

Discussion Points:

·         There has been a 25% increase in sickness in Adult Services in last six months pro rata.  This is not unexpected. 41% of the increase is related to stress. 85% of sickness in last six months is long term sick.

·         Department has a three pronged approach to finding a solution and bringing down sickness levels: 

Ø  HR Approach – monitoring compliance and checking up on management of absence

Ø  Occupational Health – working with stress management and counselling.  Already providing psychological support for staff via Teams, which has been taken up by 100’s off staff.  Also, where resources allow, piloting approach with Adult Services front line staff around direct support with individuals. 

Ø  Working with the teams themselves to co-produce a wellbeing plan.  Hope to find some innovative solutions.

·         Table 3 – 12% with no reason recorded.  Panel queried if this was due to failure of the system.  Informed could be due to people recording sickness but not the reasons.  Department is doing work around this to find out more.

·         Panel felt prevention was better than cure with regard to sickness, and queried if there is anyone outside the social services system who could look at the mechanisms in place and try to reduce the stress people are under. Informed removing stressful nature of work is difficult and much more so in the current climate. 

Panel discussed the work programme for 2020-21 and agreed to add the following:

1.    Effects of Covid-19 pandemic in residential homes and actions taken (include data from March 2020 to present day in this). To be scheduled as soon as possible

2.    Isolation of elderly people

3.    Domestic Violence and the increase over the pandemic.

a)    Letter to Cabinet Member (13 July 2020 meeting)

Letters received and considered by the Panel.