Issue - meetings

To consider a report of the Strategic Director of Children, Families and Adults (to follow)

Lucia Scally and Rob Walker attended to present the Carers Strategy and Implementation Plan Update report. Rob Walker explained that the purpose of the report was to inform Members of the progress of the Carer’s Strategy and Work Plan since the ratification by Cabinet on 3 October 2011. He noted that the report also indentified some additional areas for inclusion in the Carers’ Implementation Plan.

Lucia Scally acknowledged that the Carers’ Strategy for Cheshire East had been developed in partnership with a number of agencies. With this in mind, she introduced Sue McDowell (Head of Involvement and Patient Experience and PCT Lead for Carers), Ed Beckett (Chairman, Carers Reference Group), David Harvey (Chief Executive, Cheshire Carers Centre) and Victoria Worthington, SMART team manager.

Rob Walker continued to provide a summary on the four key areas where significant progress had been made:

1)    Young Carers – Rob Walker explained that this work was in an embryonic stage but that it had been aided by the merging of the children’s and adult’s directorates. Rob Walker reported that this work stream was necessary as the needs of young carers differed considerably from adult carers.

2)    Carers’ Needs Assessments – Victoria Worthington noted that during 2011/12, the Council completed 2910 carers’ assessments out of 8176 (35.6% completion rate). This was in contrast to 2010/11 in which 1023 assessments were completed. She noted that the National Indicator target for carers assessments was 28%. Despite being pleased to such an improvement, Victoria added that the service was working to improve not only the number of completions but also the quality of them.

3)    Carer Development Link Worker/Trusted Assessors – As part of the work to improve the quality of carers’ assessments, Rob Walker explained that the service had made successful use of Trusted Assessors to undertake carers’ needs assessments for those service users with mental health issues. This had been developed in conjunction with Making Space and further analysis was required to see if it could be rolled out to other client groups across the Borough.

4)    Carers into Employment – Rob Walker explained that this was a very important issue and that the Council had already done some successful work to support Council employees that were in a caring role.

Rob Walker also outlined a number of strategic priorities relating to the Carers Strategy:

1)    LINKs Respite Report – Rob Walker noted that the emerging concerns from this report had been added to the implementation plan.

2)    Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) – This was ongoing work to help CCGs to develop joint commissioning intentions to support carers. Sue McDowell noted that within GP Practices there were already identified Carers’ Leads.

3)    Carers Support ‘Map’ – This had been developed by the Carer’s team to support Carers in accessing the right information, advice and support to aid them in their caring roles.

4)    Carers’ Needs Assessment Pilot – Rob Walker reported that part of this work stream was to develop a ‘Carer’s  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6