Issue - meetings

1)         Mr Mills was asked to update the Committee on the Directorate’s recent inspection and ongoing restructuring.

(a)       Initial feedback from the CSCI inspection on the Safeguarding of Vulnerable Adults undertaken from 10 to 18 March had been broadly positive, with some areas highlighted as needing improvement.  The final report of the inspection would be available in mid-July and at that time KASS would produce an action plan to address the areas for improvement.  Mr Mills thanked staff, other agencies and Members for their contribution to the inspection process.  Members in return said they were proud of the positive way in which KASS staff had approached the exercise and been open to challenge.

(b)       All new appointments had now been made to the new management structure of the Directorate, and phase 2, to allocate front-line staff, was now under way.  Mr Mills undertook to send all POC Members a note of the new management structure and to update them further on the restructuring at the Committee’s July meeting.  The complete new structure would become live in October 2009 and at that time Members would be given a further update.  Mr Mills assured Members once again that no reduction in front-line staff had been made; reductions and voluntary redundancies had been in management posts only.  Changes in the structure had been made to assist the delivery of Self-Directed Support and Personalised Budgets which came into use for all newly-assessed clients today and would be phased in for existing clients later.

2)         Mr Mills added that two other changes coming into play today which were pertinent to the work of KASS were the introduction of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to take over from the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) in undertaking inspections, and the introduction of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.  All Members of the County Council had been sent a briefing note to introduce the new Safeguards.