Agenda item

The Strategic Director for Social Care and Education submits a report that sets out the quality of care in regulated services for Adult Social Care in Leicester.

Members of the Commission are recommended to note the report and the changes within the local care market during and since the pandemic.

The Deputy City Mayor for Social Care and Anti-Poverty introduced the item and noted that recent reports in the media were not accurate picture and that figures used had been manipulated.

The Strategic Director for Social Care and Education took the opportunity to commend the Deputy Head of Contracts and Assurance for Adult Social Care

And their team for their dedication to ensure care homes could operate during and after Covid.

The Strategic Director for Social Care and Education further noted that, it had been long standing policy of the government that provisions should essentially be delivered externally and there were some limited internal provisions, with all provisions regulated by the CQC. The Authority had contracts with almost all care homes in the city and the authority’s statutory responsibility was to ensure that the local care market was operating sufficiently and with the right service.

In response to the recent media coverage, it was noted that the media only covered poor ratings and there was ongoing work during these challenging periods, with work force issues and the cost for providers to deliver quality of care and the teams involvement directs this.

The Deputy Head of Contracts and Assurance for Adult Social Care provided an overview of the report and noted that the CQC were carrying out risk based reviews, so were only going to care homes where they think there are issues. it was further noted that the CQC ratings across the East Midlands region was of concern and a meeting with the CQC had been arranged locally.

The Fair Cost of Care work as part of the government review provided a better understanding than previously and suggestions were made by some providers that what we pay for care is less than what it cost to deliver the care the to put this on the Work Programme for the new Commission.

Regarding the article in the Leicester Mercury, the Deputy Head of Contracts and Assurance for Adult Social Care noted that the article said that 60% of providers in Leicester were failing whereas 50% had a rating reduction, 29% of care homes stayed the same and that 17% had an improved rating. So, it was 60% of the 39 care homes that they'd seen, but not 60% of the entire market.

Furthermore, in domiciliary care, the service had contracts with 32 of 141 providers and only 4 of those required improvement and work was underway closely with those providers on a risked based approach.

As part of the discussions and in response to Members questions it was noted that:

·         Meeting with the CQC was planned and had not taken place yet and was part of the work with ADASS, it's planned for the near future to  have the required discussions

·         There had been a huge change in CQC,  a whole new management team locally both from the head of inspection all the way through to our inspection managers locally have changed over the last year, a  whole new team for Leicester City that started just over 12 months ago.

·         In these 12 months the service had four inspection managers, conversations to understand from the CQC senior management team whether there are any differences and whether they had seen a difference within their own systems and processes.

In response to the Chairs query on 0hr contracts within the sector by providers, the Strategic Director for Social Care and Education noted that, providers set their own business models to suit their employee needs with a range on contracts including 0hr contracts. Additionally, market pressures and the DHSE require the service to produce a market sustainability plan to have an understanding of the market which sets out where is the market, what are the issues, what are the challenges and what is it that we are going to do about that. The Fair Cost of Care exercise was done to come up with a fair cost of care which it did not achieve but inadvertently provided a better understanding of the market than what we had previously and had been very helpful in that way. Strategic Director for Social Care and Education suggested to the Chair to add this item on the Work Programme for the new Commission.

AGREED:

1)    That the Strategic Director for Social Care and Education and his team be thanked for bringing the item to the Commission to address the issue

2)    That the frontline workers be thanked for their delivery of quality care and commitment to the service during challenging times, and,

3)    That the Strategic Director for social Care and Education be requested to bring the item on Market Stability, Fair Cost of Care Plan to the Commission following the report being produced.