Question to the Cabinet Member Communities from Councillor Tim Thomas

Over the duration of the next medium term financial plan, what will this Council do to ensure that people living with disabilities are fully able to access roads, streets and highways that they use on a day to day basis within their community?

Question to the Cabinet Member Social Services and Early Help from Councillor Altaf Hussain

According to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Wales, Accident and Emergency Departments in Welsh Hospitals are like battlefields. Welsh Government blames flu outbreak, increase in calls over the Christmas and New Year Norovirus. Dr Robin Roop, Vice President of RCEM Wales said for the staff an emergency department feels like a battlefield, patient safety is compromised, this is unsafe, undignified and distressing for patients and their relatives. Several Health Boards across Wales have had to postpone operations because of the winter pressures. ABMU cancelled most routine planned surgeries. Health Secretary Wales has apologised to the patients whose surgeries are being cancelled.

This means that more patients especially elderly will be admitted through Accident and Emergency with Flu, Respiratory problems, falls etc. Some of these patients will be discharged soon.

Are we well equipped with regards to the Social Care for these discharged patients at Council Level and will the Cabinet member assure the chamber that there will be no bed block syndrome in our hospitals because of delays in social care?

Question to the Cabinet Member Communities from Councillor Tim Thomas

Over the duration of the next medium term financial plan, what will this Council do to ensure that people living with disabilities are fully able to access roads, streets and highways that they use on a day to day basis within their community?

Response:

All carriageways and footways are regularly inspected, in accordance with the code of practice “well maintained Highways” defects in excess of nationally agreed criteria are repaired in accordance with appropriate response times.  This ensures as far as reasonably practical the highway is safe for the use by all members of the public.

Where requests are received for dropped kerbs to be introduced at junctions currently such improvements are installed in conjunction with highway maintenance work carried out to reconstruct a footway, when its condition has deteriorated to such an extent that it is considered to be dangerous. The highway maintenance budget is limited and we would advise that it has not been possible to fund the installation of pedestrian aids in isolation in the past. When individual requests have been received they are entered on to the Works Register and considered when funding is available, there are currently over 100 locations on the register.  However, town and community councils have previously funded individual improvements within their areas and these have been installed in-line with current guidance.

Requests are made yearly for capital funding to undertake some of the streets recorded on the works register, and funding was granted this year to target those locations where requests have been received.  £50,000 of orders had been issued to the term maintenance contractor to undertake these types of works this financial year.  The streets on the work register have been prioritised based on the categorisation of the footway, which is based on the code of practice. Streets with a higher categorisation have a greater footfall, and are hence targeted first.  As these locations are at junctions of carriageways, the categorisation of the higher of the two streets that are joined is used to assess the priority.

Any new highway works adhere to the appropriate acts and ensure that they are DDA compliant.

If there are issues with access from private properties onto the highway, that is a matter for the private properties to address within their boundaries.

Councillor Thomas asked a supplementary question as to whether the £50,000 funding would tackle the backlog of requests.  The Cabinet Member Communities confirmed that the funding of £50,000 would not cover the backlog which is a county wide issue. 

Councillor Webster highlighted the difficulties experienced by residents of the Newcastle ward with people parking in streets in order to access the town centre and questioned whether further residents parking schemes could be implemented in order to alleviate the problem.  The Cabinet Member Communities asked Councillor Webster and Councillor T Thomas to provide him with details of the streets affected within their ward so that he can ask officers to look at the problems highlighted. 

The Corporate Director Communities informed Members that the Council has a prioritisation programme for residents parking and requests for dropped kerbs could be considered as part of funding within the capital programme.

Question to the Cabinet Member Social Services and Early Help from Councillor Altaf Hussain

According to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Wales, Accident and Emergency Departments in Welsh Hospitals are like battlefields. Welsh Government blames flu outbreak, increase in calls over the Christmas and New Year Norovirus. Dr Robin Roop, Vice President of RCEM Wales said for the staff an emergency department feels like a battlefield, patient safety is compromised, this is unsafe, undignified and distressing for patients and their relatives. Several Health Boards across Wales have had to postpone operations because of the winter pressures. ABMU cancelled most routine planned surgeries.  The Health Secretary Wales has apologised to the patients whose surgeries are being cancelled.

This means that more patients especially elderly will be admitted through Accident and Emergency with Flu, Respiratory problems, falls etc.  Some of these patients will be discharged soon.

Are we well equipped with regards to the Social Care for these discharged patients at Council Level and will the Cabinet member assure the chamber that there will be no bed block syndrome in our hospitals because of delays in social care?

Response:

The impact of ‘winter pressures’ is felt across the whole health and social care system and therefore the response to these pressures must also be from the whole system.  When the hospital is at Level 4 escalation this, in turn, impacts on the capacity of our community teams.

The context in Bridgend is that there are established integrated teams and a strong history of partnership working across the health and social care sector. This means that we have a strong relationship and processes in place which we can rely on at such challenging times.  At the moment we have in place daily telephone conference calls with the POW hospital for social care discharges and daily meetings for wider hospital flow.  Senior managers on both sides are committed to regular communication to jointly problem solve those situations that warrant escalation. In order to respond to the current pressures social care in Bridgend has the following in place:

• Integrated community team which includes 2 Community Physicians
• Acute Clinical Team in place which operates over 7days
• Hospital social work team who are focusing their attention on effective discharge
• 2 staff who between them attend every appropriate board round and receive direct referrals, this is a pro-active approach to ensure that patients, medically fit for discharge, are ‘pulled’ from the hospital
• Better at Home service in place which is a short term discharge service that facilitates early discharge from hospital so that patients aren’t waiting for a social work assessment or another care service

At the moment BCBC has been able to respond quickly and appropriately and the number of delayed discharges for social care reasons at any one time is very low and these are being given a very high priority.  There are wider issues in the system, for example there is a shortage of nursing EMI beds within the Borough.  Although plans are in place to develop this sector this will take some months to achieve.

Councillor Hussain asked a supplementary question, as to whether there is an ambitious plan to go through the difficult years at local level so that we are well prepared about the future years which the panel has warned about.

He also referred to the concerns about the move from ABMU to Cwm Taf Health Board and since BCBC are the major stakeholders facilitating the move, have they considered bringing up this issue with Cwm Taf Health Board to ensure that patients transfer from health facilities to social care is as smooth as possible and what discussions they have had with Cwm Taf around this area?

The Cabinet Member Social Services and Early Help stated that there is a need for reform both locally and nationally and a partnership approach is needed.  He gave an assurance that every effort would be made to ensure that residents would not stay in hospital any longer than required.  The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing stated that the Council is always ambitious and has a good track record with transfers to care and is in the top quartile for performance.  She also informed Council that the Cabinet Secretary had recently launched a review of health board boundaries and a presentation on the proposals would be made to the meeting of Council in March where the Chief Executive and Chairperson of Cwm Taf Health Board would be in attendance.