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Social Services Annual Report 2020/21

Invitees

 

Claire Marchant - Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing

Councillor Nicole Burnett - Cabinet Member for Social Services & Early Help  

Councillor Dhanisha Patel - Cabinet Member for Future Generations and Wellbeing

Jackie Davies - Head of Adult Social Care

Laura Kinsey - Head of Children’s Social Care

Andrew Thomas - Group Manager - Sports and Physical Activity

Pete Tyson - Group Manager - Commissioning

 

Minutes:

The Director of Social Services & Wellbeing presented the key themes of the Annual Report and advised that the last year had been very much about creativity, a lot of innovation but also a lot of sheer hard work, from people right across the whole system. Safeguarding had always been central, even in a public health-led pandemic, citizens and communities had been badly impacted and lost many people, and the recovery and renewal piece for social services, as part of that response, was going to be really important. Staff really needed the time and space to recover at their own pace, or faced the risk of burnout and attrition, which was being seen at the moment because the pace hadn't slowed, and if anything, had accelerated moving into the final two quarters of the year.  Services had adapted to new working practices, which were highlighted in the report. Stabilisation and renewal were critical over the next six months and she reinforced the point that the workforce was critical to this success, with more dependence on all parts of the workforce than ever before.

 

The Chair thanked the Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing for presenting her report and thanked the Corporate Director and her team for their all their efforts during a very challenging year.

 

The Cabinet Member for Social Services and Early Help thanked the Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing and her team for putting the report together and noted that despite the awful year, there were so many good examples. She appealed to Members scrutinising the report to focus on the human aspects in terms of the financials and figures.

 

A Member highlighted the issue of staffing generally and asked what the local authority was doing to ensure if could get staff.

 

The Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing acknowledged that there was a national piece of work around workforce, working closely with WG and with Social Care Wales. This was firstly to promote the sector, secondly to look at the really difficult issues, such as the implementation of the WG manifesto priority around a real living wage for care workers and thirdly around professional standards, working very closely with Social Care Wales, around the registration of not just professional social work staff, but of care workers. It was really important that Bridgend were key players on the national stage and informing and co-producing policy where necessary.  Bridgend was keen to promote Bridgend to be as successful as possibly can in retaining and recruiting the Bridgend workforce. The Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing then went through the different action plans in terms of recruitment, for both the social care workforce and then the social work workforce.

 

The Member asked what would happen if people didn’t come forward, which was her concern. Were people applying already and showing an interest to what was already being shared and any job adverts.

 

The Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing acknowledged that this was difficult because of competing in very overcrowded space in terms of both the social care worker and the social work workforce whilst starting from a place where lots of people weren't coming forward wanting to do these jobs. She noted that quite significant numbers of people applied for healthcare support worker jobs but weren't coming forward in the same numbers, to work for the local authority in care jobs or to work in the independent sector, so there was a need to understand and do everything within the action plans to make Bridgend as attractive as possible.  There were challenges in the short term and the Authority was looking at how it brought in workforce via agency, which could cause difficulties, but what was most important was meeting statutory duties in both social work and social care workforce. That needed to be done in the best way that wasn’t disruptive and supported the workforce and the retention piece being the absolute most important and not something which causes more difficulties for the existing workforce. She advised of the need to look at how people's needs can be supported in different ways for example Bridgend was really successful with assistive technology and the need to continue to promote that and look at how need and demand for services are managed in a way which is most effective and cost effective. This really was a challenge and absolutely needed a whole council approach and sets of aligned actions about what could be done locally, regionally and nationally.

 

The Cabinet Member for Social Services and Early Help explained that there were a number of issues she wanted to extend on including the lack of national pay scale for social workers, which was extremely damaging for the local authority because of not only competition from immediate ordering authorities, but with authorities around the UK, for experienced staff. She reassured members that long conversations were being had within the care workforce and social care. There was a need to empathise with the workforce because people should not fall through the hoop. The Council needed to meet its statutory needs and at the moment the workforce was working tirelessly to ensure that.

 

The Chair asked Members if there were any further questions regarding the evidence provided in the report, as she was conscious that Members comments were sought that could help strengthen the report.

 

A Member acknowledged that he liked the format of the report and offered his admiration to the whole of the department for the work that had been done in what could only be described as challenging times. However, he acknowledged that the county was not a level playing field and there were areas of significant deprivation within the county and asked how the socio-economic duty would affect the work now and in the future.

 

The Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing explained that in terms of the application of the socio-economic duty, as with many diseases, Covid had been a disease of inequality with some of the most deprived communities most severely impacted. From a social care perspective when looking at the services there was a need to make sure the duty was properly understood and applied because it may mean different solutions in some parts of the county borough than others. In some parts of the county borough this could mean focussing on the right set of interventions and not just supporting people in terms of connecting them, but actually doing that active community development work where there were gaps in what was naturally occurring within communities. Whilst in other parts of the county borough the Council didn’t necessarily need to take such a strong role, e.g., the Porthcawl Covid-19 Strategy Group, where the community itself came forward. The Council was part of a group addressing vaccine inequalities in outcomes and any postcode inequalities looking at the evidence-based interventions to make sure these were being addressed in the right way.

 

A Member referred to page 91 of the report and noted the number of contacts received was down from 6810 to 4742 and asked if this was Covid related or if the Council was moving in the right direction and generally the number of contacts was coming down.

 

The Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing explained in terms of the number of contacts, that it was a very unusual year to look at any trends because there were times of the year when some of the normal referrers were operating very differently, e.g., schools, primary care, health visiting, etc. More of a normalisation was starting to be seen, as services came back on board as would be expected and there was some need and demand which didn't come through early enough which was now causing some pressure on services, but last year it really did fluctuate depending on the period of the lockdown whether referrals were coming in or not.

 

The Member noted that the number of children on the child protection register had increased from 165 to 201 and asked if there had been an increase due to Covid.

 

The Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing explained that in terms of the child protection register and the number of registrations, she was quite comfortable with the level. The Council was in one of the higher quartiles of numbers of children on the child protection register in Wales and had confidence in that in terms of the protection that was afforded to children on the child protection register. It was quite right and proper that the register remained quite high at the moment, given the challenges that children and families had faced and given the fact that there may have been some delays in children and families coming forward and in terms of the ability then to statutorily intervene with families, whereas all steps below the child protection register were voluntary.

 

The Member referred to page 93 of the report and asked for further clarification regarding the 296 total number of reports of children who go missing during the year, and the 99 total number of children who go missing during the year.

 

The Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing explained there was a process which came into effect, whenever a child or young person was missing for a period of time, working closely with South Wales Police, particularly around how to code these.  Some children and young people went missing quite frequently and some would present quite significant risks to themselves, with those sorts of situations managed in a multi-agency way to look at how to support and what the risk management plan was around that child or young person. She did not think, currently, there were any children or young people missing currently.

 

The Member referred to page 99 and noted that in respect of Maple Tree House that the number of children placed during the year had dropped from 22 to 9, with children placed in supported living remaining the same. She asked if the figures were down because of Covid or another reason and what was the reason for moving the existing service to a purpose-built provision.

 

The Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing explained that the relocation of maple tree house would include additional capacity. Within the provision, there was both emergency provision and short-term assessment provision, both of which were critical and both of which was better managed separately. A far better building was needed for that, as well as a better location which would also enable co-location with other aspects of placement services. This would enable the fostering team to really get to know the children and young people as they went through the detailed and thorough assessment that they had in the assessment unit. There were some exciting plans around this although she noted there had been a little bit of delay in the implementation, although this was a priority for going forward.

 

Following on from this the Member noted that a press report had highlighted that following an inspection of maple tree house, there were issues and there needed to be improvement. She was disappointed that these press reports did not then report on any of the improvements and asked for clarification about attendance not just at maple tree house, but all adult and childcare premises, especially when Members were not currently able to visit.

 

The Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing acknowledged the reporting the Council received. She gave assurance to Members around visits into premises and confirmed that the two responsible individuals for in-house care homes were the Head of Adult of Social Care for the adult care home provision and the Head of Children’s Social Care for the children's provision. Both had continued throughout the pandemic to undertake their responsible individual duties, which included a strong focus on quality assurance, linking in with the facilities. However, at times during the pandemic, this had to be virtual and was very well evidenced, but as the risks reduced, then those quality assurance visits had been increasingly face to face, noting that herself and the Cabinet Member for Social Services and Early Help had recently visited themselves as well. She explained that she would work with Members in terms of the reintroduction of rota visits, as it was a really important part of what they did in terms of fulfilling corporate parenting and other safeguarding responsibilities.

 

She advised that in terms of Maple Tree House itself, the Council was not formally in any escalated sort of state of intervention from the CIW and would continue to report through into the corporate parenting committee. CIW had continued to inspect, from a regulatory point of view, throughout the last year into regulated services and undertook a full quality assurance check at the start of April with the report to be published in the Autumn.

 

The Cabinet Member for Social Services and Early Help reassured Members that visits were taking place with the same level of scrutiny being given. With regards to Maple Tree House a report had been received by the corporate parenting committee, regarding the CIW inspection, with an update on the improvements that had been made and how that the Council was not in any special measures. She was disappointed with the reporting and asked that Members share the correction information.

 

A Member referred to the safeguarding policy on page 42 and noted that on page 57, paragraph 2, it stated that ‘as a statutory officer, I need to review, consolidate and strengthen safeguarding resources’, and asked how the Corporate Director - Social Services & Wellbeing proposed to do that.

 

The Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing explained that because this was a corporate / whole council safeguarding policy there was a need to make sure all the right information was being received from across the council, with all directorates needing to understand their interface with safeguarding and safeguarding responsibilities. In order to do that the right governance arrangements were needed. One of the things she was looking to do was to establish a corporate safeguarding board that sat beneath CMB and CCMB, reporting to them the right information around safeguarding and with an officer to support that.

 

The Member acknowledged this but felt the responsibility of safeguarding should not be confined just to Officers. Members also had a role to play, not only with visits to care homes, but in terms of reviewing corporate policy during the scrutiny process and suggested that this was something that could be considered when considering the activities of the safeguarding board.

 

The Corporate Director Social Services & Wellbeing agreed that this was helpful and one of the things within the new safeguarding policy was that there would be an annual safeguarding report to members on the effectiveness of corporate safeguarding.  This would draw out in a lot more detail than she was able to do in the headlines in the annual report, the effectiveness of corporate safeguarding, and would be one of the key duties of the new officers. The other thing being considered jointly, between officers in both Social Services & Wellbeing and Education and Early Help, was to ensure that there was some further member training on safeguarding during the next term for members. This should be context specific to the role of Members, rather more general e-learning.

 

The Cabinet Member for Social Services and Early help re-emphasised the importance of elected Members to attend all safeguarding training that was available especially those that sat as LEA governors, as the training wasn’t mandatory at present.

 

RESOLVED:          That the Committee noted the content of the Director of Social Services’ draft Annual Report for 2020/21.

Supporting documents:

 

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