To review the draft Adult Social Care Local Account 2017 and supporting key performance presentation to enable the committee to make recommendations to the executive about the discharge of any functions which are the responsibility of the executive.

The Interim director for adults and wellbeing introduced the draft local account, which, although it was no longer a requirement to produce, was believed to be best practice to do so. In his accompanying presentation the director also provided an update on the adult social care pathway, and made the following points:

·         The local account was a draft for consideration, plus a broader set of performance information focusing on the past year from January 2017

·         Phase 2 of the adult social care pathway project had now closed; the development of the pathway involved providers and the voluntary sector to look at the call handling and responses to calls to the front door at the assessment and referral team (ART).

·         A new strengths-based route explored why someone has contacted the front door and explored what outcomes they were looking for, identified the risks and supported someone to be as independent as possible. 60% of callers were offered information, advice and signposting, with the remaining callers being offered additional support.

·         The pathway involved a community broker function; the council tax precept had been used to develop community connectors in order to map community resources across the county and identify trusted providers through the third sector, which led to the introduction of the community broker function as a team of seven, 2 of which were funded through a grant from the MOD for supporting service personnel.  The brokers were organised so that there was always one at the front door to provide information for the call handlers so that the offer was of high quality and took into account someone’s wider wellbeing.

·         The new arrangements made it possible for callers to be responded to quickly and ensure that they knew when their appointments were and who their practitioner was. Support was now allocated immediately and this was felt to be a great achievement. 

·         The community brokers were soft market testing the roll-out of Talk Community across the market towns and the city where they would be available for drop-in contact. 

·         The pathway works with a strengths based approach to look at what people can achieve and do for themselves, what risks were attached, and what the neighbourhood and community could do. Community brokers were experts in the communities, being at the front door and throughout the discharge process. 

·         In terms of delayed transfers of care, there were known pressures in the system and most delays were not as a result of waiting for assessment. There was more robust monitoring of performance data and making changes to the flow of transfers to increase speed of transfer. 

·         Reablement and rapid response services were being brought together into the home first social care offer. Adult social care and Wye Valley NHS Trust were working together to continue to integrate health and social care but it was important to make the distinction between the different pathways for clinical health input and the council home first service. 

·         Planning for the home first programme started last summer before the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7