Agenda item

(To receive a report which provides the Audit Committee with an insight on the assurances across all critical services and key risks in Adult Care)

Consideration was given to a report which provided the Audit Committee with an insight on the assurances across all critical services and key risks in Adult Care.  The Director of Adult Social Services was in attendance to provide the Committee with an update on work which was taking place within the directorate.

It was reported that this was the second assurance status report which had been presented to the Audit Committee.  The first had been presented in November 2012.  The Committee was advised that the general direction of travel was improving, but there were still a few risks.  There were five strategic priorities for Adult Care in 2013/14, which were:

·         A balanced budget outturn

·         Improved performance

·         Integration with health

·         Established plans for the delivery of key elements of Adult Care transformation

·         A set of quality indicators

The Committee was informed that the position of Adult Care had been improving for the last 6-12 months, and excellent support had been received from finance colleagues, and so had been able to get into a level of detail with spend analysis that had not been able to do before.  It was expected that the budgets for Adult Care would balance at the end of the financial year.

Members of the Committee were provided with an opportunity to ask questions to the officers present in relation to the information contained within the report, and some of the points raised during discussion included the following:

·         As the public demand for quality care continued, there would be a need to ensure that contractors had staff trained to meet the needs of the people they cared for;

·         The Committee was assured that quality had become a priority in Adult Care.  Following a review of domiciliary care, Lincolnshire was found to have the highest rate of compliance in the East Midlands.  Age UK would also be commissioned to undertake face to face quality checks;

·         There were 80,000 domiciliary visits made in Lincolnshire per week;

·         It was hoped to introduce an electronic system to monitor visits, this would require staff to call a Freephone number when they arrived at a visit and before they left.  They would call from the service users home phone, and this would provide information on how long the visits were, how many visits a person received and how many different staff visited the person, which were all quality markers;

·         A degree of assurance could be provided regarding quality of care in residential homes, however the domiciliary care sector was the most diverse as it did not make a distinction between those working in rural areas and those working in more urban areas.  The authority was hoping to negotiate with the sector about recognising this;

·         It was projected that the budget would just about balance for the year, but for the future there was potential for more funding to be received through health integration;

·         It had been agreed with health colleagues that prevention and intervention were important priorities;

·         It was thought that the growth in the older population in Lincolnshire over the next 5-10 years would be profound;

·         Adult care in the future would no longer be able to exist on its own as it became more interdependent with health, and direct care was not supplied in the majority of cases. A completely new business model would be required for the future;

It was requested that the Director of Adult Social Services come back to the Committee in January 2014 with a further update.

RESOLVED

            That the current status of the Adult Care assurance regime be noted;