Agenda item

The Strategic Director, Adult Social Care submits a report that presents information on Leicester’s own and comparative performance against measures in the Adult Social Care Outcome Framework (ASCOF), the national performance regime for Adult Social Care for the financial year 2015/16.

The Commission is recommended to note the contents of the report and make comment on the contents.

The Strategic Director Adult Social Care submitted a report that presented information on Leicester’s own comparative performance against measures in the Adult Social Care Outcome Framework (ASCOF), the national performance regime for Adult Social Care for the financial year 2015/16.

The Strategic Director presented the report after which Members raised a number of comments and questions, including the following.

The Chair asked why there appeared to be deterioration in the number of adults with learning difficulties in paid employment and whether any action was being taken to address this. The Commission heard that one issue was that the indicator to measure this had been changed. As part of the implementation of the enablement approach and new Enablement Service, the Council was supporting people towards being independent and not relying on care and support from the Council and as such they were not counted because they were not in receipt of social care, in paid employment and therefore not included in the statistics. There was an employment team which helped people into paid employment and volunteering and a suggestion was made for the department to liaise with the Assistant City Mayor for Jobs and Skills to see if she might be able to raise this issue when she met employers in Leicester.

The Chair raised a query relating to the number of working age adults whose long term support needs were met by admission to residential or nursing care. The Commission heard that it was forecast that 26 people of working age would be admitted to residential care in 2016/17 compared to 39 for 2015/16, which demonstrated the department’s commitment to look at other options to support people to live independently in the community.

Councillor Dempster commented that as the Chair of the Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Commission, she wished to congratulate staff in Adult Social Care for the progress they were making in relation to the transfer of care from hospital to home or residential care. She added that any blame for the delays could not be attributed to Adult Social Care. The Director for Adult Social Care and Safeguarding responded that the situation relating to delayed transfers of care continued to improve. The Adult Social Care department also continued to engage with the National Health Service as there was no desire for people to remain in hospital any longer than was necessary.

The Chair raised a question on behalf of the Vice Chair, relating to reablement. The Director, Adult Social Care and Safeguarding explained that the reablement services between councils varied significantly. In Leicester, the service was targeted to those with a level of need, which if unaddressed, would likely require support through Adult Social Care. In addition, many people were supported through the Integrated Crisis Response Service rather than reablement. Leicester had a slightly different way of organising this but it was proving to be effective.

There was some discussion relating to the England Quartiles (appendix 5 of the report). The Strategic Director explained that much of the feedback they received was very positive, but some of the indicators relating to the perception of service users (for example about their quality of life) tended to receive a low response. There was a need to try to understand the impact of the service as the questionnaires did not provide rich data about why people answered the way they did and the rationale for the answers, but only gave a yes / no type of response.  There was a hope however that with all the work being undertaken, those perceptive indicators would improve.

The Chair thanked the officers for the report and asked Members to note the report.

AGREED:

                   that the report be noted.