The Director of Adult Social Care and Safeguarding will provide a verbal update at the meeting.
Minutes:
The Director for Adult Social Care and Safeguarding provided a verbal update on a strengths and asset based approach within social work practice.
The following points were made:
· Strengths based practice was a term used for building support within social care, and putting the person looking for support at the centre of social work, not just by focussing on their needs, but by really enabling them to identify the things they wanted to be different and to work up solutions about how they could achieve that.
· The practice focussed on an individual’s strengths, which might be, families, communities, networks. The approach did not diminish Adult Social Care’s statutory duties, nor did it take away things like eligibility for service provision. But it required Adult Social Care to get to those matters in a different way, to help people resolve their own situations, with Adult Social Care support as needed.
· The asset based approach was about how Adult Social Care helped people to make the best use of local assets, where they could use them to meet a need or desired outcome, for example, community services, informal networks. A pilot was run for about a year within the front door service, to test out what it meant for staff and customers in practice. Some of the key learning points were:
o Time – staff spending more time with people in conversations aimed at finding sustainable solutions;
o Trust – managers allowing staff to be more self-directing in how they help a customer achieve their outcomes;
o Sustainability – solutions could take a little extra time to achieve but were sustainable for the longer term, meaning people were not coming back for support on a repeated basis;
o Confidence and satisfaction – staff loved this way of working and customers found it beneficial;
o Training – there were some extra skills that staff needed, for example in motivational interview techniques;
o Culture – there was work still to do to support all staff to understand how they could adopt the strengths based practice;
o Assets – people were able to use what was available but there was a limited amount of community capacity building resources within Leicester. Any solution to that was wider than Adult Social Care.
· Next steps – the Department would take the following three actions over the remainder of the financial year:
o Defining strengths and asset based approaches to help staff understand the two.
o Investment in training – developing a skills programme for staff to enable them to take a different approach to conversations with people who approach us for support and also with long-term clients;
o Process – need to continually learn and develop processes, using customer outcome as a basis for forms.
· The Department hoped that the first three steps would support staff to work in a way the pilot identified was good for customers and good for the Department. A report on progress would be brought to a future meeting of the Commission.
The Chair queried that with continued government cuts, what would happen in a ward without buildings available and where would people go. It was explained that as part of the approach, things might take place in buildings, and it was acknowledged that it would vary in different areas. Assets could take the form of individuals, street level, families, connecting neighbours, as well as moving out to physical locations. Ensuring assets were available was a corporate issue and were being mapped along with health colleagues.
The Chair asked that the Department ‘tapped into’ gardening projects and allotments across the city, and to map the information. Also, that based on children going into local care homes, older persons should be encouraged to link up with the care homes.
The Strategic Director for Social Care and Education informed the meeting about the Mychoice directory, an online map for care and support products and services for people. It was described as being resource intensive, requiring input and keeping up to date. He explained there were dozens of schools across the city not in the control of the local authority, but could be approached and encouraged to connect to the service.
Members put forward that a report be compiled on the strength and asset based approach, and what made it a corporate concern. They suggested going to other authorities to see how they dealt with it and encapsulate it into a report to be taken to the Executive and then to OSC. They expressed concern that the Department would rely on small, intangible voluntary support, the issues around buildings availability, issues with schools, and the need for the Executive to look at the issue thoroughly.
Members added they would like to have more paper-based information in the future rather than verbal updates. It was unclear how this information differed to the report presented to a prior meeting. They asked how the approach would be monitored and evaluated, what mechanisms were in place to scrutinise and report positive outcomes.
The Director for Adult Social Care and Safeguarding explained that part of the work being undertaken was to see if the strengths and asset based approach was beneficial and sustainable, for example, by looking at repeat referrals. She clarified that there hadn’t been a report at the previous Commission meeting, but a discussion about strengths and asset based approaches had been prompted by the Strategic Director’s report on the ASC proprieties for 2018/19.
Members said there was no general parity of wealth, experience, education, or business to build on a material asset to benefit everyone, and that the procedure was also potentially an asset failure, and it was unlikely it could be provided equally across the city, as there were some patches of the city that had less resources than others.
The Assistant Mayor for Adult Social Care and Health stated that resources had be placed in Adult Social Care to meet statutory requirements, to help those in dreadful circumstances. She added that what was trying to be achieved using the strength and assets based approach was to intervene before people got into crisis. Also, the model did not rely on building new buildings, but by using what was in existence in a better way. It was evolving in other parts of the country and there was no reason why it would not work here.
With regards to schools, many of them were collaborating with each other in the city, 60% of which were not academies or free schools. It was noted that if a tenth of primary schools wanted to be a part of the scheme, there would be a spread across the city, but again it would require a corporate approach.
In response to a question from the Chair, the Director for Adult Social Care and Safeguarding explained how the council already worked with partners in health across neighbourhoods. Work had already commenced to develop a local asset map, and by capturing information on the local community, working in a multi-disciplinary way, and by talking with partners on how to support individuals’ positive outcomes could be achieved. An example given was small groups of people reaching out to each other, which would reduce isolation and improve mental health.
After discussion between Members it was suggested that a recommendation be made to the Executive. Having considered the approach, it was believed that the outcomes would be best achieved by a corporate approach, and would therefore ask the Assistant Mayor for Adult Social Care and Health to take a report to the Executive and feedback on the response to OSC.
The Chair thanked the officers for the update.
It was AGREED that:
1. The update be noted;
2. The Chair asked that the Department ‘tapped into’ gardening projects and allotments across the city, and to map the information;
3. A report be compiled on the approach of what made it a corporate concern, to go to the Executive, and feedback of the response to go to OSC.