Agenda item

The Director of Adult Social Care and Safeguarding submits a report informing Members of the Better Care fund and the local plan through which this funding can be accessed.  The Commission is recommended to note the report and comment as appropriate.

Members are asked to note that the detail of the proposal for the draft local plan is in the Plan Template.  Due to the short period for submitting the plan, there will be on-going discussions between all parties involved in submitting the plan and NHS England over coming months and the Plan will continue to develop and evolve.

The Director of Adult Social Care and Safeguarding submitted a report informing Members of the Better Care Fund and the local plan through which this funding could be accessed. 

It was noted that the detail that needed to be included in the draft local plan was included in a Plan Template.  Due to the short period for submitting the plan, there would be on-going discussions between all parties involved in submitting the plan and NHS England over coming months and the plan would continue to develop and evolve.

Some concern was expressed that the way the report was presented and the terminology used made it difficult to scrutinise the draft local plan.  It was recognised that Councillors were not the key audience for the documentation and that this was a very early stage in the process of obtaining approval for it, but Commission members were lay people, who did not have the level of technical knowledge that appeared to be assumed by the documentation.

Councillor Palmer, Deputy City Mayor, advised the Commission that the Better Care Fund application had to be made in a certain way, which was why it had been submitted in this format and why it was phrased the way it was.  The timescales for accessing the Fund were challenging, as there was only a very short time between publication of information about the Fund and the deadline for submission of a draft local plan.  However, the application had been signed off by the Health and Wellbeing Board in January 2014, as required by the government, and submitted by the deadline of 14 February 2014.  The documentation submitted to this Commission therefore was all that was available at present. 

The documentation submitted set out the principles that would underpin the Council’s approach to Better Care.  This was summarised in the descriptions of the five work streams to be undertaken.  Work was ongoing to prepare the full plan, which needed to be submitted to NHS England and Public Health England by 3 April 2014.

The Director of Adult Social Care and Safeguarding explained that this was not a public-facing document.  It was a requirement that a specific template be followed and it contained a lot of health and social care terminology, as this was what was needed to provide the required assurance to the approving bodies.

In view of the concerns expressed, it was suggested that a joint briefing be held for members of the Adult Social Care Scrutiny Commission and the Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Commission.  From this, it could be decided which elements should be scrutinised by each Commission.  This also could help the Executive to engage appropriately.

Rachna Vyas, Interim Strategy Lead for Leicester City Clinical Commissioning Group, advised the Commission that a very strong communications and engagement plan was running alongside the draft local plan.  This was designed for the public, but the local plan was not.  It was recognised that it would be useful to extract the essential elements of the plan to enable the public to gain an understanding of it, but at present the entire care pathway was being examined, which included having to looking at information from Public Health England that went down to a very detailed level.  It was anticipated that this would result in the joint team of health care providers being empowered to do what was needed to prevent patients from needing to go in to hospital and from being passed around the system.

Councillor Rita Patel, Assistant Mayor (Adult Social Care), addressed the Commission at the invitation of the Chair.  She explained that consideration was being given to the impact that the changes being introduced through the Better Care Fund would have on the Council’s budget.  For example, it was important to encourage integration and avoid duplication, as there already was a gap between Adult Social Care Services provided and funding available.  These proposals therefore had been taken in to account in the preparation of the Council’s budget. 

The Deputy City Mayor confirmed that a significant proportion of the £23 million that was being made available to the city was not new funding, but the Better Care Fund provided a new focus for it.  The parts of the funding that were new to the Council, (approximately £11.5 million), previously had gone to health services.

In response to a question from the Commission, the Deputy City Mayor advised that the systems established by the government invited challenge of the local plan.  There would be opportunity for Members to be involved in this at quite a detailed level, as this was not a stand-alone plan, but had to relate to many other plans and issues.

RESOLVED:

1)    That a joint briefing on the Better Care Fund be held for members of the Adult Social Care Scrutiny Commission and the Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Commission;

2)    That Director of Adult Social Care and Safeguarding be asked to work with appropriate officers to make an initial assessment of which scrutiny commission could scrutinise which parts of the local plan for use of money from the Better Care Fund, so that following the briefing referred to under resolution 1) above a decision can be taken on whether this division of work should be adopted;

3)    That, pending the outcome of resolution 2) above, an item updating Members on the Better Care Fund be included on the agenda for each meeting of the Adult Social Care Scrutiny Commission; and

4)    That the Chair of the Adult Social Care Scrutiny Commission attend meetings of the Health and Wellbeing Board as an observer.