Agenda item

To receive verbal updates from the Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and the Corporate Director of Adult Social Care and Health.

1.    Graham Gibbens (Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care) gave a verbal update on the following issues:

Homelessness Commissioning – Kent’s district and borough councils took statutory responsibility of homelessness under the Homelessness Act 2002. Services that were provided in Kent for vulnerable homeless people allowed Kent to meet its obligations under the Care Act and support the achievement of strategic outcomes. The services that were provided in Kent were in place to ensure that vulnerable people had the support that they needed to recover from, or avoid crisis and to gain the skills required to achieve and maintain successful and independent lives. Since discussing Homelessness in the Adult Social Care Cabinet Committee meeting in November 2017, Kent had continued to work closely with all sections of the community with an interest in helping to share and plan the future service. As well as 1-1 meetings with individual organisations, over 30 events had taken place to engage with suppliers and stakeholders, including the districts and boroughs, to garner their views on future provision. Events took place in public spaces such as libraries, Gateways, community hubs and day centres across Kent, providing the opportunity to listen to members of the public, community leaders and those who were currently using the services. Care had also been taken to meet with vulnerable homeless people who were not using services, to try to better understand the barriers that they faced. A public consultation had taken place from 22^nd January to 4^th March and over 265 responses were received. Feedback from the consultation was in the process of being analysed, but it was clear that there was strong support for the Council’s proposals to bring services together and for the potential outcomes presented. The results of the work that had been undertaken in Kent were being used to inform the development of service specification and tender documents for the revised service. The item would return to the Committee for a key decision in time to enable the Council to proceed to a robust, procurement process for the newly designed service, which was due to be operational from October 2018.

Loneliness and Social Isolation – On 27 February, Mr Gibbens took part in the Loneliness Action Group which was chaired by the British Red Cross. The Loneliness Action Group focused on exposing the crisis of loneliness and finding ways to overcome it through both service provision and the group itself.

Safeguarding Update – Members were invited to attend safeguarding sessions at the beginning of March, one of which was a visit to the Central Referral Unit in Kroner House, Ashford. The Local Government Association (LGA) had recently published the Councillors Briefing 2015 Safeguarding Adults document which would be circulated to all Members of the Council.

Digital Conference in London – Kent was one of 19 authorities in the country to receive £50,000 through the LGA to focus on digital activity in relation to Social Care. The County Council were asked to present their activity at a shared digital conference in London and the Care App was presented. The app enabled care navigators to feed back responses on the quality of service and the types of service that they received in Social Care. The app received good commendation and Michael Thomas-Sam had been asked to present the Care app again elsewhere.

2.    Anu Singh (Corporate Director of Adult Social Care and Health) gave a verbal update on the following issues:

Extreme Weather Conditions in Kent – Anu Singh registered thanks to all the staff within Adult Social Care and also staff throughout the County Council for making such a tremendous effort to keep core services open during gruelling weather conditions.

Phase 3 – Improving Lives and Achieving Better Outcomes – Phase 3 came to the end of its design phase in November 2017, and Kent had now moved from Phase 3 into a new operating model and had started to embed the model as ‘business as usual’. Since November 2017, Kent had been working with senior leaders across Adult Social Care and Kent’s partners to see how the new operating model would be managed and how development could be encouraged. She discussed the four themes relating to the new model which included organisation, delivering locally, changes to commissioning and delivering strong asset based practice. She said that the item would be brought to the Adult Social Care Cabinet Committee in the future.

Sustainability Transformation Plan update – Kent had eight Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) within the Sustainability Transformation Plan (STP) for Kent and Medway and significant progress had been made. Six out of the eight CCGs had agreed through their formal governance to act as a Committee in Common, this meant that the County Council were able to clearly understand how best to deliver that service across Kent and Medway. Thanet and South Kent Coast CCGs had not adopted this through their formal Committee governance and therefore Kent needed to understand what this meant for the Committee in Common. The leadership of the STP were confident that this would not impact how Kent were operating as a single commissioning arm across Kent and Medway.

a)    In response to a question relating to homelessness, Anu Singh said that Kent’s primary responsibility for Adult Social Services was the vulnerabilities around homelessness and whether people had eligible care needs. She said that she would liaise with Matt Dunkley (Corporate Director for Children, Young People and Education) to ensure that support was provided to families and work was being done to ensure that families were not separated.

b)    In response to a question, Anu Singh said that she would issue a written thanks to staff for their efforts to keep core services open during extreme weather conditions. She said that, whilst contingency plans were in place, extraordinary resources were limited.

3.    RESOLVED that the verbal updates by the Cabinet Member and Corporate Director be noted.