Agenda item

To receive and consider the attached report of the Head of Scrutiny and Member Development which details the outcome of the annual rating review for 2008/09 undertaken by the Care Quality Commission (formerly the Commission for Social Care Inspection – CSCI).

The Board received and considered the report of the Director of Adult Social Services, previously submitted to the Executive Board on 9^th December 2009, regarding the outcome of the annual assessment carried out by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for 2008/09.

The overall assessment was that the Department was officially ‘performing well’, which was an improvement on the previous year’s ‘adequate’ rating.  In respect of the 7 core outcomes against which the Department was assessed, it had improved performance in 3 of these areas and was rated as ‘performing excellently’ in 1 area, ‘performing well’ in 4 areas and ‘performing adequately’ in 2 areas (see Paragraph 6 of report).

The Chair and Board Members congratulated the Director of Adult Social Services on this achievement and requested that these congratulations be conveyed by the Director to all staff in the Department.

In attendance at the meeting and responding to Members’ queries and comments were:-

-  Sandie Keene, Director of Adult Social Services.

-  Dennis Holmes, Deputy Director (Strategic Commissioning).

-  Stuart Cameron-Strickland, Head of Policy, Performance and  Improvement (ASC)

In brief summary, the main points of discussion were:-

·  The need to sustain the gains made and to press on with improvements across all areas, working towards the goal of an overall ‘excellent’ rating.

The Director stated that the expected standards changed year on year, meaning that even maintaining a particular rating from one year to the next could be regarded as an achievement and effectively an improvement in service.  Nationally, 95% of authorities providing adult social services were assessed as being either ‘good’ or ‘excellent’, and the likely outcome was that the CQC would be carrying out a fundamental review and seeking to raise the bar in terms of the required standards.  The challenge would be to try to meet these more exacting standards against a backdrop of local authority budget restraints.  It was unlikely that the Department would face another inspection in 2010. 

·  Reference was made to some misreporting in the CQC assessment report of the organisational set up and funding of the Leeds Involvement Project and the Alliance of Service Users and Carers. 

The Director acknowledged this, and added that one of the really pleasing aspects of the latest assessment was the improvement from ‘performing well’ to ‘performing excellently’ in the category ‘Making a Positive Contribution’, which was an acknowledgement of how far the Council had come in engaging local people and service users in policy making and decision taking.

·  The Department was aiming to achieve a ‘performing well’ assessment in respect of its efforts in the ‘Maintaining Personal Dignity and Respect’ category.  This would represent quite an achievement, to go from ‘performing poorly’, via ‘performing adequately’ to ‘performing well’ in the space of two assessments.

·  Reference was made to a television programme shown on the BBC the previous night, relating to standards in care homes for people with dementia.

In response, the Deputy Director outlined the inspection, assessment, monitoring and education work undertaken by the Department locally, which was supplemental to the work carried out by the CQC.  There were 283 care homes in the Leeds area, and whilst standards would always vary between providers, and even within the same establishment at different times, overall services commissioned by Adult Social Care in Leeds were regarded as being good.

·  In terms of ‘cases which slipped through the net’, assurances were given that the Department had a case review sub-group of the Safeguarding Committee so that lessons learned could be put into immediate practice.  Efforts were also being made locally to integrate this work with that already carried out independently by other service providers, such as the NHS and Children’s Services, so that a comprehensive review mechanism was in place.

Work continued to embed a referral, investigation and response service in respect of individual complaints received from the public, Members and MPs in order that fast and appropriate action was taken at the right level in respect of such matters.

·  In respect of one key area identified for improvement – the numbers of people waiting for minor and major adaptations – whilst the authority might be meeting national targets in terms of the length of time taken to install adaptations, there was always room for improvement.  However, it had to be acknowledged that demand was always likely to outstrip resources in this respect and there was only ever a finite number of people whose needs could be met from a limited budget.  Whilst numbers of applicants was an issue, the length of time they had to wait for an adaptation was more significant.  This was a separate item on today’s agenda.

RESOLVED – That, subject to the above comments, the report be received and noted.