To receive apologies for absence.

Apologies were received from Councillor GA Vaughan-Powell.

To receive details of any Members nominated to attend the meeting in place of a Member of the Committee.

Councillor J Hardwick for Councillor GA Vaughan-Powell.

To receive any declarations of interest by Members in respect of items on the Agenda.

None.

To approve and sign the Minutes of the meeting held on 12 September 2013.

The Minutes of the Meeting held on the 12 September were approved and signed as a correct record.

To consider suggestions from members of the public on issues the Committee could scrutinise in the future.

(There will be no discussion of the issue at the time when the matter is raised.  Consideration will be given to whether it should form part of the Committee’s work programme when compared with other competing priorities.)

There were no suggestions.

To note questions received from the public and the items to which they relate.

(Questions are welcomed for consideration at a Scrutiny Committee meeting so long as the question is directly related to an item listed on the agenda.  If you have a question you would like to ask then please submit it no later than two working days before the meeting to the Committee Officer.  This will help to ensure that an answer can be provided at the meeting). 

There were no questions.

To consider the Committee’s Work Programme.

The Committee noted its Work Programme. During the ensuing debate, the following points were made:

·         That caution should be exercised when looking at the Work Programme, the addition of too many items would make it hard to achieve the results that the Committee would like to see.  Ideas should be prioritised onto the Work Programme.

·         That Public Health should be an area that the Committee should first consider and could be addressed through task and finish groups.  The following suggestions were made:

¶  Occupational Therapy and the provision of equipment

¶  Mental Health Services

¶  Standing item on engagement with the Health & Wellbeing Board

·         That the Access to Services Review would await the outcome of the Clinical Commissioning Groups Urgent Care Review.

·         That as officers were under such pressure at the moment, a focus on communication across the Council could be of benefit to the Committee.

·         A review of the effectiveness of the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub should be included

·         The Chairman of Healthwatch suggested that Members should visit the organisation to see for themselves on order to see what it did.  The Interim Director for Adults Wellbeing welcomed this suggestion and said that Healthwatch would allow people in the County to feed back into the commissioning process.  A report on the performance of Healthwatch would be received on a biannual basis.

RESOLVED:  That the work programme be noted.

To receive a presentation on the Adult Wellbeing Priorities.

The Committee received a presentation on the Adult Wellbeing Priorities for 2013 to 2017.  During the presentation the Interim Director for Adults Wellbeing highlighted the following areas:

·         The role of the Health and Wellbeing Board (HWBB) and that the priorities highlighted both the way that the partners needed to work together and that the Board would be expect to be democratically accountable as one of the criteria under which it worked for the benefit of residents of Herefordshire.

·         There were four key themes that the HWBB was addressing which included: 

o   Staying Healthy - ways of encouraging residents to look after themselves and thereby reduce the impact on the healthcare system. 

o   Communities - a large piece of work which would start in November and would look at how greater benefit for the individual could be generated by large groups of people.

o   Integrated Working - how reorganisations were carried out.

o   Think Family - the impact of alcoholism in the County.

·         The specific aim of the organisation priorities was to ‘enable residents to live safe, healthy and independent lives and to maintain service provision, to those with need, within the available resource’. Commissioning work was being undertaken in order to achieve a reduction in demand for services and to target support where it was most needed.

In the ensuing discussion the following points were made:

That the next meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board would address the issue of an apparent lack of strategy in partnership working. 

That care should be taken when depending too much on volunteers, as people only tended to volunteer for activities they were interested in and their time was limited.  The Interim Director concurred, and said that the issue of unstructured volunteering would be addressed and co-ordination to understand where the gaps in cover were would be considered.

RESOLVED: That the report be noted.

To receive a presentation on the draft Care and Support Bill.

The Committee received a presentation on the Care and Support Bill 2013. During the presentation the Interim Director for Adults Wellbeing highlighted the following areas:

·         That the Bill would change care and support in two fundamental ways, as the focus would move to promoting people’s independence, connections and wellbeing by enabling them postpone the need for care and support.  This alteration would be supported by ensuring that people were in control of services and that services would respond to what they wanted.

·         The Integrated Transformation Fund was a pooled budget for all health and social care services to work more closely together in local areas, led by the Health & Wellbeing Board.  It had a substantial level of funding, and would held to deal with demographic pressures in adult social care.  Whilst it would not come into full effect until 2015/16, it was important to build momentum during the coming year using monies transferred from the NHS to the local authority to support the required transformation.

·         Local performance and governance would be overseen by the Health & Wellbeing Board and the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) had set up a Task & Finish Group on how the Bill would be implemented which would report to the Board.

·         The Chief Operating Officer said that this was a complex area for the CCG.  Of the overall budget of £3.4bn, £1.9bn had been set aside nationally to fund the changes.  Herefordshire’s share of this was £7m which was currently committed to frontline services.

·         The Cabinet Member (Health and Wellbeing) said the Committee would be made aware of any material or significant issues that occurred throughout this process.  There would be a great deal of meetings involved and briefing notes would be provided between meetings for the Committee as the situation changed.

·         The Cabinet Member went on to say that he had recently been involved in meetings looking at the initial projections for the formal budgets, and that close budget management would be crucial to this process. It was an issue for all authorities, but particularly for rural counties, and the local MPs had been made aware of the situation.

RESOLVED:  That the report be noted.

To consider the findings arising from the Task and Finish Review Group

Report on Children’s Safeguarding in Herefordshire.

The Chairman of the Task and Finish Group presented the Task & Finish Group Report: Scrutiny of Children's Safeguarding in Herefordshire.  She highlighted the following areas:

·         That the group had felt that one of the main outcomes was the necessity to look more closely at the recruitment and retention of social workers.

·         That there needed to be a commitment to safeguarding between all the partners involved.  A Standing Group of Members looking at safeguarding issues would help reinforce this.

·         That the recent Peer Review that had been undertaken in safeguarding had been supportive of the Group’s report

·         Better use of Frameworki should be made than was currently the case.  Other councils were using it effectively, Cornwall being a prime example.

·         That there was a strong view that Member’s allowances should not be paid until Members had been trained in safeguarding issues. 

A Member of the Group went on to say that it had been a very in-depth Review that had been well worth doing.  She pointed out that in Cheshire and Cheshire West, the all aspects of the council felt that children were important, which was not the case in Herefordshire and safeguarding was not cascading through the organisation.

The cabinet Member (Young People and Children's Wellbeing) thanked the Review Group for their work and said that all the recommendations within the report make good sense and would be accepted.  He went on to say that Paul Meredith would be replacing Kathy O’Mahony as Assistant Director Safeguarding & Early Help and he would be meeting with all of the senior staff of the social workers in Social Care.  Whilst Children’s Services were becoming more central to the Council, there was still work to be done.  Public Health would concentrate on the family and family services over the coming year.

RESOLVED:

That:

(a)     The Committee considered the report of the Task & Finish Group – Scrutiny of Children’s Safeguarding in Herefordshire, in particular its recommendations, and agreed the findings for submission to the Executive;

(b)     Subject to the Review being approved, the Executive’s response to the Review including an action plan should be reported to the first available meeting of the Committee after the Executive had approved its response.