Issue - meetings

To consider a report of the Performance and Information Manager.

Sue Crompton, Performance Standards & Information Manager, attended to update the Committee on a report received by the Health and Adult Social Care Committee on 10 March 2011 and to inform the Committee on the progress being made to produce a Local Account for Adults who were in receipt or might require social care intervention.

Providing the context, Sue Crompton explained that the government had announced changes to the way that local authority social care services were assessed. She reported that previously, councils had been assessed each year by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and through the national indicator set. Both the Annual Performance Assessment by the CQC and the National Indicator Set requirements have ended.

In their place, Sue Crompton explained that the Government had suggested the following:

1)    Local Account

-   A document published by a local authority to illustrate how it believes it has made progress on achieving its goals for adult social care over the year.

2)    Outcome Measures

-       These would be published annually so that national comparisons could be made across Councils on a number of different measures.

Very simply, the Local Account would be a tool for accountability which would promote transparency and help councils and citizens alike to scrutinise progress against set priorities and outcomes.

Sue Crompton described how Cheshire East Council had established a ‘Local Account Steering Group’ to oversee the development of the Local Account. Part of this process had been to develop a questionnaire in order to ascertain what local people and service users would see as their priorities. Sue Crompton added that the steering group were hopeful that the first Local Account would be published in September 2012.

Clarification was sought as to whether the Local Account would cover private care or just what Cheshire East commissioned. Sue Crompton confirmed that the CQC were still doing inspections of private care homes. Lucia Scally added that the role of the Local Account was to provide qualitative information and would inform the commissioning process in the future.

A query was made with regards to Local Indicator LI002, provided in the appendix. It was suggested that data on this indicator would have been more meaningful if those service users who had not been able to receive services due to hospitalisation would have been separated. Jacqui Evans, Head of Local Delivery/Independent Living Services, acknowledged that this needed to be done and reassured the Committee that work was going on to achieve this.

A number of comments were made with regards to methodology used for consulting with service users over the formulation of the Local Account. Lucia Scally asserted that the methodology had been comprehensive as the online survey was easy to use and access and for those who could not access it; face-to-face consultation exercises were planned. It was acknowledged that there might be lessons to learn but as this was the first time a Local Account frame work had to be developed, this was to be expected. She also noted that the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 36