Agenda item

The Committee considered a report of the Director of Adults and Communities which provided a summary of the latest guidance from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) regarding the assessment process and feedback from the pilot inspections which were undertaken during the summer of 2023, and the latest versions of the Department’s Self-Assessment and Improvement Plan. A copy of the report marked ‘Agenda Item 8’ is filed with these minutes.

Arising from discussion the following points were made:

i.          Members questioned how people on the waiting list were to be kept informed of any changes to their situations. The Director reported that there was a waiting list practice guidance and policy which required managers within the Department to review people waiting for assessment on a weekly basis, to see if there was any change in their needs, which helped to prioritise a person’s position on the waiting list and ensured risks were managed. Over the period of six to nine months since this guidance was adopted, waiting lists had dropped by half as people were being seen more quickly and risks managed in a cohesive way.

ii.          The Director provided information on Impact, an organisation hosted and sponsored by the University of Birmingham which provided national research on social care, and which was looking across the East Midlands at people’s waiting experience. The County Council was working with Impact to look at other ways of managing risk around waiting to ensure people had the best experience, and to consider what could be done to improve their experience and that of carers and families.

iii.          Members queried where the Director thought the County Council would stand in the CQC ratings when looking at the results of the CQC pilot scheme. The Director reported that he had no doubt that from a practice, strategic and policy perspective the Council would rated a strong ‘Good’. However, the feedback from the annual user survey and bi-annual carer survey, including ease of accessing information, or how much social contact people had, placed a lot of the Council’s key performance indicators in the bottom two quartiles.  This moved the Council to being on the cusp of ‘Requires Improvement’ to ‘Good’. It was noted that the CQC placed a lot of weight on what people told them and would not assess any authority as excellent if they did not have good user survey results.

iv.          Members asked if an action plan was in place to reshape the thinking of customers in preparation for the CQC inspection. The Director reported that the two main areas of complaint and frustration related firstly contact, either with customer services and long telephone waiting times, or social contact, and secondly financial assessment outcomes and charging. Whilst work had been undertaken to address these issues, the area of social contact was a difficult one to address. Work was planned with the community and voluntary sector to support the Council in this area. However, the Director explained that the Council did not provide or commission as much social support as other councils, as it did not have the same level of funding to support this. A Member suggested that the Department could send a generic email every few months to find out how people were doing.  This would help provide some assurance to people that the Council was keeping in touch and monitoring their support needs at no cost to the Council.  The Director agreed that this was a good suggestion, and that conversations could also be held with people who provided care to see if they too could have those same conversations.  The Director undertook to consider the proposal further.

v.          Members noted the learning points and considerations for Leicestershire set out in the report and asked how they would be addressed and incorporated into the Improvement Plan. Members requested that the Director provide a short update on this to a future meeting of the Committee. Members also requested that the Director provide six-monthly update reports in future to ensure it could be seen by the CQC that matters were being kept under review at a member level.

vi.          Members queried if the CQC had to take into consideration the amount of funding the Council received for social care and how it was prioritised. The Director responded that there were legislative requirements and regardless of how much funding or resources were available, the CQC would assess each council on the same basis. However, the CQC were now allowing authorities prior to the assessment process to provide some context to allow authorities to go over things, such as, fair funding.

RESOLVED:

a)    That the report on the CQC Assessment of Local Authorities, and latest versions of the Department’s Self-Assessment and Improvement Plan be noted and welcomed.

b)    That the Director be requested to:

(i) consider the introduction of a standard process for contacting people on a more regular basis by email to provide assurance that the Council was keeping in touch regarding their care in between the annual review process.
 

(ii) bring a report to a future meeting of the Committee on how the learning points and considerations for Leicestershire will be incorporated into the Improvement Plan.

(iii) bring regular six-monthly update reports to the Committee on progress.