Agenda item

Barrie Towse, Cheshire East LINk Chair and Neil Garbett, Team Leader of the LINk support team, will present the Annual Report.

Copies of the Annual Report are enclosed.

Barrie Towse, Chair of the Cheshire East Local Involvement Network (LINk), presented the Annual Report. 

The report outlined the structure and membership of the LINk and detailed the work carried out over the year, including:

      Enter and View – the LINk had a statutory right to Enter and View Health and Social Care facilities to ensure that they complied with essential standards set by the Care Quality Commission.  A number of such visits had been undertaken including a number of unannounced visits, including to 2 Emergency Departments, 1 Elderly Care Ward (which had been unannounced) and to 2 Learning Disability facilities.  The notice when undertaking visits was anything up to 15 days.  It was sometimes helpful to give a short period of notice as this would enable the manager to make sure they were available;

      The Mental Health Sub Group had undertaken work with CWP, the provider trust, and been involved with a number of consultations on service changes;

      Hospital discharges and readmissions – the LINk had listened to patient experiences and sought views on the local radio.  Discussions had been held with both Acute Trusts on discharges and readmissions, and the East Cheshire Hospital Trust had introduced Patient’s Passport to try to identify those at risk of readmission;

      Communications – a Sub Group had been formed to look at improving communications and had commissioned an advertising campaign on the local radio as well as reviewing the website;

      Social Care – work in this area had included a one day conference at Crewe Alexandra Football Club on Demystifying Personalisation which had been attended by over 100 delegates; following the success of this event, 2 workshop events had been held in Knutsford and Congleton.

The LINk had developed constructive relationships with a number of partners through Joint Liaison Meetings which were seen as a successful initiative; these were monthly meetings with representation from a wide variety of organisations including the Primary Care Trust, GP Consortia, Council for Voluntary Services and Local Authority.  The LINk attended the Overview and Scrutiny Committee meetings and representatives welcomed the opportunity to contribute. 

Neil Garbett, the Support Team Leader, explained the role of the Support Team. The role had been refocused due to staff changes and close working arrangements had been developed with a number of organisations.  Training had been held for members especially in relation to Enter and View.  The LINk had also applied for Pathfinder Status and was waiting to hear the outcome.  There was still uncertainty around future funding.  Lucia Scally explained that there was uncertainty from central Government around the future funding of Healthwatch but some transitional funding had been made available from the Adult Social Care budget.

Members discussed the Annual report and made the following points:

      The LINk were to be congratulated on their work and their report which was an excellent in-house production;

      The hard work of the LINk members, who were all volunteers, was to be commended;

      It was suggested that a short introduction to the Report on the role and purpose of the LINk, including how people could get involved, would be useful;

      The LINk representatives were asked about their funding sources and explained that funding came from the Carers Federation towards staff costs and from the Local Authority for carrying out work;

      Fiona Field advised the committee that during a recent visit by the Care Quality Commission the Patient Passport had been commended as an “outstanding” piece of practice;

      It was noted that one very useful finding from the work carried out by Manchester Metropolitan University in relation to Safeguarding had been the need for organisations to keep contact details and websites up to date so that contacting the relevant person was straightforward;

      A suggested area for the LINk to look at in future was the liaison within a hospital for patients with both a mental and physical illness, such as a dementia patient who was admitted due to a broken bone.

RESOLVED: that the Annual Report of the LINk be received and the representatives of the LINK be thanked for their attendance.