The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing presented a report, that outlined her Social Services’ Annual Report for 2015/16 for approval, and requested that Members note the judgements reached locally about social care services in Bridgend.

This was the seventh such Annual Report, and was based on the Authority’s self-assessment of the performance and delivery of social services. The Report in its entirety was attached at Appendix 1 to the report.

The report outlined certain background information, following which it confirmed, that the aim of the report was to provide the Council and people living in Bridgend County Borough with an overview of the standard of social care they were being provided. The report aimed to highlight the progress made during the year and to identify where improvements are needed during 2016/17.

The report was split into four parts, and these consisted of the Director’s overview; the Head of Adult Social Care report, the Head of Safeguarding and Assessment report, and a Glossary of Terms.

In preparation of the report, two fundamental questions were considered, namely, are there effective arrangements in place to safeguard children and adults and to promote their welfare and voice as well as their independence and social inclusion, and could performance be sustained and improved.

The report confirmed that services were generally effective in meeting the needs of people who require the support of social care, and identified that the services were improving overall, although areas had been identified where improvement was required.

Paragraph 4.7 of the report, outlined feedback from the CSSIW on performance in the previous year, that included areas where there was good practice, as well as other areas where improvement was required, and the Annual Report for 2015/16 addressed these and confirmed what actions had been taken, or alternatively, were being progressed.

The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing referred to the remainder of the report, which clarified the priorities for improvement in 2016/17, that reflected the analysis of performance and attempted to address the increasingly challenging context, both financial and demographic, both in Adult Social Care and Safeguarding and Family Support.

The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing, then proceeded to give a power point Presentation, entitled Director of Social Services Annual Report 2015/16, followed by a short video involving a service user who was receiving one of the many services provided through the Social Services Department.

The Mayor then invited questions from Members on the Report and the accompanying Presentation.

A Member congratulated the Corporate Director, Social Services and Wellbeing on the Annual Report, as it generally made for positive reading. However, he referred to page 36 of the report and sickness absence statistics and calculated that within 2015/16 the Department had incurred through its staff a total of 16,642 days sickness absence within this period. He also calculated, that based on an average salary of £23k, this would have resulted in the Authority losing around £1m and 35k due to such levels of absence. He referred to the report’s Priorities, and suggested better controls of sickness absence should be added to these priorities.

The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing, advised that as Members would have noted earlier within the Chief Executives announcements, he had been tasked as part of his Staff Appraisal, to monitor sickness absence across the Authority, with a view to reducing this. She conceded that there was a high rate of sickness absence within the Social Services Department, and both herself and Managers within the Department had with assistance from the Human Resources Department, been looking at actively taking steps in an attempt to reduce this. Return to work interviews, as recently shared at a meeting of the Children and Young People O&SC, had also improved she added, particularly in terms of their thoroughness and through being less lenient with staff who had a poor sickness record including significant numbers of uncertified sickness absence. The monetary loss that the Member referred to was particularly high, given that front line staff who supported service users had to be replaced if they became absent from work. Sickness absence was also a regular item for discussion at meetings of CPA she further added.

A Member made reference within the report, to the ‘Love to Walk’ scheme, which was an Annual Programme that helped people overcome social isolation. However, the scheme excluded people who had dogs, which was denying individuals the opportunity to use the scheme, and in doing so, prohibited them from finding like-minded people. She had raised this matter with the appropriate Cabinet Member as she felt it could be deemed as a form of prejudice against dog owners.

She also referred to page 60 of the report, where there were new systems in place in order to ensure compliance with legislative requirements for completed assessments, including DoLS, within a period of 21 days. It appeared though that some of these assessments were taking far longer to complete and in some cases completion was not taking place for up to 5 months, resulting in these individuals having their liabilities denied for some considerable time.

In terms of the first point on the ‘Love to Walk’ scheme, the Corporate Director Communities advised that this was something that had been initiated by his Directorate, and he confirmed that he would look into the issue of dog owners not being able to use this scheme, and come back to the Member outside of the meeting. The walks were led by volunteers, and sometimes they weren’t familiar with the animals which had led to problems with both the behaviour of the animal and the sometimes negative attitude of the dog owner, which had made other users of the scheme a little nervous or uneasy. Also, some of the walks proceeded across private land, and some landowners were not entirely happy about dogs perhaps fouling on their land and irresponsible owners not cleaning this up.

With regard to the second point made by the Member in respect of delays with completion of assessments, the Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing advised that her Department were aware that the performance in this area needed to be significantly improved, and both she and her Officers working hard to improve the percentage of these completions within the statutory time period. Though this was no consolation, she added that a considerable number of other local authorities in Wales were having similar problems in this area of work.

A Member felt that the report reflected an improving picture, though the successful delivery of Social Services was dependent upon the delivery of certain packages. There was reference on page 33 of the report to the retention of Social Workers, and that during 2015/16 Bridgend had 20 newly qualified Social Workers. He asked the Officer if this fact meant that there were currently too many inexperienced Social Workers working within the Authority, at the cost of losing too many experienced Social Workers possibly to neighbouring authorities. If this was the case, he asked if there was any incentive for the more experienced Social Workers to be retained within the Authority.

The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing, advised that the recruitment and retention of Social Workers had previously been the subject of debate at the appropriate Overview and Scrutiny Committee, though the above was more of an issue in Children’s Services rather than the Adult Social Care Department. It was fairly easy she confirmed for Social Workers to move on from one Authority to another due to the easy transport access via the M4 corridor. Steps were being taken however, to look at the development and support of the workforce in Children’s Services and Adult Social Care, that included a project that had been put in place monitoring retention of staffing levels.

The Group Manager Safeguarding and Quality Assurance added that there was a Recruitment and Retention Board in place, that looked at amongst other things, the reasons why staff ie Social Workers were leaving the Authority. As part of this, a member of staff within Human Resources had been benchmarking salaries that were being paid for these posts within neighbouring authorities, and there was no significant difference in the rate of pay from one Authority to another. Upon staff leaving undertaking exit interviews, the most common reason for these staff leaving the Authority was due to their specific individual family circumstances.

A Member referred to page 22 of the report, and the bullet point which confirmed that a Commissioning Plan for Independent Domiciliary Care was being developed, and that a new framework for this had been due to commence in April 2016. She asked if this had in fact now commenced.

The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing advised that this had commenced several months ago, and reports had been submitted to recent meetings of the Cabinet on how the Plan was progressing. She added that 13 new providers had been incorporated within the Framework, and 8 of these were currently active.

A Member referred to page 32 of the report and reference to workforce training, and she felt that it was positive to note that this training was in place. She asked the Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing, what percentage of the overall workforce had received training in the specific line of work that comprised the role of their particular post. She also referred to page 46 of the report, and asked what became of assets when these were no longer being used by service users.

The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing, advised the Member that she would have to come back to her regarding the percentage of workforce being suitably trained in their specific area/role. She added that there was a Social Service Workforce Development Plan in place, that was partly funded by Welsh Government. This Plan highlighted areas of the workforce who required training including development training, and in what areas ie pertinent to their role. She added that between 600 – 700 staff had received compulsory training under the new Social Services and Wellbeing (Wales) Act, that included being trained on how to use a new Information System.

In terms of Assets, the Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing advised that if a particular service had been developed within a facility, but there was now no longer a requirement to deliver it from that particular building, then any monies obtained from the sale or release of this, would be fed into the MTFS Corporate budget.

A Member advised that from an Overview and Scrutiny perspective, he would have liked to see the issue surrounding employees mental health as a key Priority going forward. He stated this, due to the fact that there had been a total of 4,000 days lost through sickness absenteeism due to stress related illnesses in the service last year. More support was required to support the workforce suffering from this illness, in order that length of absenteeism could possibly be reduced, and they could in turn, return to work after suffering from such an illness, sooner rather than later. Help could also be sought, independent of the Authority under the provisions of the new Act he added.

The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing confirmed that a re-modelling programme had been developed and was moving forward in terms of the management of mental health related illnesses. She added that the control and support mechanisms for this illness, which contributed significantly to high levels of absenteeism, could be incorporated into the Annual Report for next year.

The Leader concluded debate on this item, by thanking the Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing for such a positive report and informative presentation.

  RESOLVED:                      That Council approved the Director of Social      Services Annual Report for 2015/16.