Minutes:
Documents Considered:
Quarter 2 Performance 2023-23 together with the Pro-Forma.
Issues Discussed:
Children’s Services.
· Many strengths in the Service’s performance and some complicating factors around elements. Numbers of Children Looked After have remained stable and the Service is aiming to reduce those numbers. Child protection numbers increased towards the end of quarter 1 into quarter 2. The Service has started looking at ways of how to start reducing these numbers and these should start decreasing into quarter 3.
· High level issues include the budget due to the overspend. This is mainly due to an increase in the costs of placements around residential provision and the lack of affordable placements in-county.
· The Service has refocussed on its closer to home strategy which includes the recruitment of foster carers, residential provision and bringing children closer to home. The Service has realigned the strategy and developed a Board to the actions and aims.
· In terms of staffing there is still a high reliance on agency staff. During the Autumn the Service has acquired 5 fully qualified social workers through the Council’s grow your own programme who started work in quarter 3.
· Pressures remain around high cost placements which has had an impact on budget, but overall with regard to performance on child protection and children looked after, there are plans in place to reduce these numbers going forward.
Questions:
Question |
Response |
In Section 1.2 of the Performance Report, there are three objectives identified which seem to have a red Brag status. It is difficult to see the thread between sections in the report. |
Officer Response: The Directors agreed to take those comments back to the team who compiles the report to see whether it could be improved. |
Closer to home work. Last year £1.5m was identified as savings for closer to home placements. Those savings have not been achieved as yet and it is becoming clear that this is difficult. What is being done to locate a property and could a county farm be considered as an option. |
Officer Response: The closer to home Board has tried to focus on what are the aims and objectives and what is trying to be achieved. One of those areas is around increase the numbers of in house foster carers, and the Service is working with Foster Care Wales in terms of developing a strategy alongside them to recruit new foster carers within Powys. The Service recognises that the Council has not built its grow your own foster carers in as much depth as would have been liked so the focus is around building the in house foster carer provision. There has also been a national campaign around fostering.
The Council also has responsibility for unaccompanied asylum seeker children as part of children looked after and the Service is looking at ways to support those young people with provision in Powys rather than elsewhere. A provision has been developed in North Powys with an organisation called Llamau who have secured properties in North Powys and in Brecon. Llamau provides support to the young people who live in those properties in those placements and some of the unaccompanied children have been placed together in one of those properties. It was hoped that this would have an impact on the projected savings and costs.
With regard to the residential provision, there is a residential provision strategy. The development of residential provision in Powys is being undertaken with people placed in the homes currently available. The Council has Bannau in South Powys for children with complex needs which remains full. Some of the complication about developing residential provision is that it does not automatically create a saving at the start.
The Service is reliant on staffing being drawn from agencies to provide support to those young people. The Service is trying to recruit staff for all of the homes as well as holding job fairs trying to encourage the grow our own residential staff.
Have secured a number of buildings it is now essential to develop the quality of support for those settings. Therefore, there are a number of strands being undertaken by the Service. It was uncertain whether Powys farms had been considered previously, but it would be considered as an option. |
Have the numbers of children placed outside the county reduced over the last year |
Officer Response: The number has not reduced to the target set, but there is a need to develop provision and numbers of foster families in the county before children can be brought back into the county. |
Foster carers complete an annual review on how they found the support provided to them. This was considered at the Foster Panel. If they do not feel supported or have ideas for improvements how is this picked up through a management level and fed through and actioned. |
Officer Response: That information would go to Service Manager. The Head of Children’s Services also holds monthly meetings with foster carers and feed back would be made directly to the Head of Service which is logged and is part of a rolling log of actions.
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Has something been done to make the interview process more convenient for applicants as foster carers. |
Officer Response: Yes the Council is now using technology to interview people. |
In terms of performance items which are off target such as children’s placements for 16+ due to an issue with fire doors. Why has this become such an issue and who is supposed to make this happen at pace. |
Officer Response: This is a complicated issue. The Service is working in collaboration with the Housing Service regarding the installation of fire doors. There is a backlog in the distribution of fire doors and also fitting. There is an eight week turnaround in obtaining the product before fitting. The fire doors are now fitted in the properties that the Council has as they are required as a legal requirement for that facility. |
Is the Director of Social Services aware of this as something where we should prioritise |
Officer Response: Everyone is aware, and it is a case of a national shortage of these doors. |
90% of children, young people and their and families report that they achieve their goal through accessing early help. The performance is currently 80% against the target of over 90%. Why are we not on target and what are we doing about this. |
Officer Response: This is around the Council’s early help provision. The early help service uses a distance travelled tool which tracks progress from the start of the intervention until the end. However, not all staff are using this tool in the way that was intended so further training has been undertaken with the team. This is not around interventions not happening but staff not filling in the information appropriately so this can be measured. |
Comments:
· The Chair asked whether when there was a meeting of Council or a Member development day that Members could hear from one or two foster carers about the work that they undertook or could the Council have a foster carer day. The Director of Education and Children’s Services advised the Committee that Foster Care Wales had been in attendance at County Hall for a Council meeting which had generated some interest. Providing information about the support provided to foster carers is also important.
Outcomes:
· That Children’s Services consider the use of a vacant County farm as a potential for respite or for the development of residential provision for children.
· That prospective Foster Carers do not incur excessive travel costs as part of the application process.
Adult Services.
· It has been reported in the press that there are ongoing challenges across the Health and Social Care system with sustained levels of demand and increased levels of complexity.
· There are also ongoing issues with recruitment and retention which are national as well as Powys issues.
· It has been another challenging quarter for Adult Services with ongoing internal recruitment and retention issues, sustainability issues within the provider market, and a sustained high level of demand.
· The Service has focussed on providing effective information and advice, managing demand effectively for care and support in the community, supporting people to move out of hospital in a timely manner, reviewing packages for those that have long term care needs as regularly as possible and doing everything possible to sustain the workforce.
· The Service is continuing to make progress on its extra care ambitions. Work is underway in Welshpool and Ystradgynlais as a key part of the accommodation strategy long term which is to change the profile of demand away from residential care to supporting people to live independently.
· With regard to self directed and more personalised forms of support it was noted that the numbers of people receiving a direct payment was continuing to increase.
· Social Care had a corporate recruitment and retention working group which was working at pace, for example working with digital services to make it as easy as possible for people to apply for jobs in Adult Services. A new recruitment campaign was to be undertaken in the new year as well as a market comparison exercise to assess how pay and conditions compared with other authorities.
Questions:
Question |
Response |
Direct Payments. How do we as an authority monitor the use of those direct payments funds. |
Officer Response: The default method of administering direct payments are by means of a virtual wallet (an online bank account) to make it as easy as possible for the recipient of a direct payment to pay their providers.
In terms of monitoring, the Service reviews care and support plans funded through direct payments to ensure that the amount of funding provided is proportionate to the care and support needs. |
Sustainability of the workforce. There was a plan to commission people to undertake the backlog of reviews which did not work. Then there was a plan to pay staff overtime to do this. The highest level of sickness is the Council is in Children and Adult Services and Highways which is not unsurprising. Do the Directors or Heads of Service have any concerns about sickness levels. Will doing overtime work impact on the level of sickness. |
Officer Response: From an Adult Services perspective there is a delicate balance to be found. As a Head of Service you do not want to increase demand on fatigued staff. This is why the Service looked to commission two managed services for the backlog of care and support reviews and for assessments.
However, the organisation undertaking the reviews could not meet the terms and conditions of the contract so the Service is looking to use the money differently and bring in short term agency support as opposed to asking staff to work additional hours which is not sustainable. The Service is also looking to use some of that funding to bolster the in house domiciliary care service.
In terms of Children’s Services the Head of Service was most worried about resilience, with staff continuing to work in challenging circumstances. There have been two managed teams in Children’s Services. The initial managed team did not have the desired outcomes in terms of practice and the contract was ended early as it did not fit what was wanted.
The experience with the second managed team practice was much more positive. This team was ended earlier than planned which provided a saving and some of those social workers were recruited by the Service as agency staff but managed by the Council.
There has been a difference in the recruitment of agency workers over the past few months. There are some national standards which have been agreed by the ADSS (Association of Directors of Social Services) in Wales with authorities signing up to an agreement on pay rates and not employing agency staff who recently worked in another Welsh authority, to stop people jumping between authorities. |
Is there capacity in the agency market to do this work. |
Officer Response: There was a problem recruiting agency social workers but that situation may have changed. Officers are currently liaising with agencies to see if that capacity is available. In the past few months it has been less difficult to recruit short term agency resources. |
What are the sickness levels in Childrens and Adults Services currently and what is being done to ameliorate this. |
Officer Response: In Children’s Services sickness is monitored monthly. The figures are not increasing. The Service is focussing on the reasons for sickness especially if it is stress or work related and how staff can be supported. Part of the support is around supervision, appraisals and reflective practice as well as bringing practitioners back into offices to provide peer to peer support. The Service is also looking at what can be done differently to support the well-being of staff.
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Can we expect supervision numbers to be improving in November’s performance report |
Yes |
Are staff being encouraged to go back into the office and what is the Authority’s policy about bringing staff back into offices. |
Officer Response: In Children’s Services the Head of Service indicated that the Service wanted staff to be back in the office two to three days a week to provide the peer support for staff. The Council’s approach is a hybrid approach. |
In relation to the pressures on the Domiciliary Care market are officers working with other authorities to raise these issues with Welsh Government in terms of any support that is forthcoming to Councils being ring fenced. Also is there sharing of information on a national basis. |
Officer Response: The Director of Social Services attends ADSS meetings across Wales on at least a monthly basis. As a group ADSS also meets with Welsh Government monthly as well. The ADSS group discusses challenges, issues, concerns and these are fed back to Welsh Government and Ministers. The recruitment of agency staff in children’s services was an example of discussions held, as well as the agreement on not competing with each other. Heads of Service will also be meeting with counterparts across Wales.
The Committee was advised that Powys had volunteered to be part of an ADSS working group recognising the pressures that all authorities are facing around the domiciliary care market. One of the outcomes of that group is to explore a range of different models such as a franchise model. |
Adaptations. The target of getting adaptations in place is 130 days, but current performance is 170 days. What is holding this up and what is being done to mitigate it. |
Officer Response: There has been a recent restructuring in Housing Services and a recent change of supplier for the community equipment service. The Occupational Therapy Team are working with colleagues to ensure that seamless processes are in place to reduce the timescale. The Council could also be affected by supply chain issues. |
Could officers provide an indication of how services are performing against the 11 or 12 red measures in the report for quarter 3. |
Officer Response: This information is not available at present. Quarter 3 internal reporting will be started shortly. Then this will be considered by portfolio holders so an update can be provided after that. |
Outcome:
· Noted.
Outcomes - General:
· That officers consider the structure of the performance report to ensure there is a clear thread between each section with improved cross referencing between the sections to improve the navigation for the reader.
· That the recommendations in the performance report are appropriate and robust and reflect the issues raised.
Supporting documents: