Agenda and minutes

County Councillor Fabian Craig-Wilson replaced County Councillor John Shedwick for this meeting.

None were received.

Members are asked to consider any Pecuniary and Non-Pecuniary Interests they may have to disclose to the meeting in relation to matters under consideration on the Agenda.

None were disclosed.

Resolved: That the minutes of the meeting held on 18 November 2016 be confirmed and signed by the Chair.

The Chair welcomed the following officers to present the item:

·  Tony Pounder, Director of Adult Services

·  Neil Kissock, Director of Financial Resources

·  Stephen Knight, Associate Director Newton Europe Consultants

·  Louise Taylor, Corporate Director Operations and Delivery.

In June the Scrutiny Committee received a presentation from Newton Europe which provided the Committee with an overview of how the role and remit of Newton's was contributing to the transformation of the design and delivery of services which would result in improved outcomes for adults. It was agreed that further updates would be provided to inform Members on the progress being made.

Newton Europe had been working with LCC on a major change programme called "Passport to Independence". Its aim was to help people stay healthy and independent for longer whilst improving practice and process which would lead to better outcomes for service users and overall financial savings. There are 4 main aims of the programme:

·  Promoting Wellbeing – this was working at the Community and Acute entry point to Adult Social Care to maximise usage of non-statutory services.

·  Promote and Support Independence – this project sought to promote independence through community assessments and reviews. Achieving this required improvements to the decision making practice within these teams, whilst also increasing the team productivity.

·  Reablement – this increased both the capacity of reablement and the independent outcomes people achieved through improved ways of working with providers.

·  Ordinary Lives – this was building on the potential of people with learning disabilities to enjoy an ordinary life.

The overall approach of work with Newton Europe was divided into 3 areas

·  Assessment – where were the biggest opportunities for improvement

·  Design – what were the solutions and how did we know they worked

·  Implementation and Sustainability – rolling out solutions that supported practice transformation across the County, locality by locality.

The presentation, which is appended to the minutes, went on to identify what had been achieved during the Design phase and what the wider system and partner benefits were.

Several examples were given of how different ways of working produced positive benefits for service users which included:

·  The number of people going into long term residential care had halved. From the Acute pathway alone this would lead to more than 250 fewer residential placements per year. The proportion of people going back to their own home directly from hospital went up by 25%.

·  The number of hours saved every year for community teams was a result of the screening service being able to solve more cases themselves. Teams increased the number of social care assessments and reviews by 91%.

·  More than 80% service users were receiving reablement within existing commissioning capacity and 13% more of reablement customers were fully reabled. 

It was paramount to ensure that the results of the review were sustainable. Once the criteria from the results of the review were met the Director of Adult Social Services had the authority to start a measurement period. During this period

·  Performance would be tracked  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

The Chair welcomed Jane Booth, Independent Chair of the LSAB/LSCB, to the meeting. Jane presented a report on the Lancashire Safeguarding Adults Board Annual Report 2015-16.

Lancashire County Council was a lead member agency of Lancashire Safeguarding Adults Board (LSAB). The LSAB had to produce and publish an Annual Report. The draft report for 2015-16 was presented to the Scrutiny Executive prior to publication in September and the final version was now being formally presented to the full Scrutiny Committee together with an update on the work the LSAB had completed in the interim.

The main body of the report was written by the previous Chair of the Board, who resigned earlier in 2016. Interim arrangements were made for the Chair of the Children's Safeguarding Board to also chair the LSAB and this had now been confirmed up to March 2018.

The report drew attention to the impact of changes in legislation which had put the Board on a statutory footing; it provided a brief local context and information about the Board's priorities in 2015-16, together with analysis of data, it reported on coordination and collaboration between services and drew conclusions re adult safeguarding. The report concluded with a review of news during the year which highlighted issues in safeguarding.

What was clear from the report was that adult safeguarding was challenging. Adult vulnerability was complex. The demographic profile of the community would continue to include increasing numbers of people who fell into service user groups more vulnerable to risk of abuse or neglect (including self-neglect) because of their health or social care needs or issues of mental capacity, abuse and neglect. The challenge for agencies in making a proportionate response to safeguarding issues was increased by reducing resources for all services.

The change in the statutory basis of the LSAB and the establishment of a joint business support unit with the Children's Board had enabled the Board to be more pro-active, to develop a formal business plan, and to develop effective sub-groups to deliver the plan. The main body of the report reflected on work completed since April 2016 or currently in progress; there was much being done and more to do. The busy agenda was only made manageable through the commitment of the LSAB members and its business unit.

Questions and comments by the Committee in relation to the report were as follows:

·  There were concerns about delays in processing referrals and in dealing with assessments linked to deprivation of liberty safeguards. Members stated that these were unacceptable. The issues around deprivation of liberty safeguards were not just a Lancashire problem but a national problem. The reality was that it had become a much greater workload. More resources had been put into it but it was still difficult to manage. There was a law commission piece of work going on to pull the legislation back into a sensible position that could be made sense of. The people who were at most risk in not having these procedures followed  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

The Work Plan was presented to the Committee regarding upcoming topics and future topics not yet scheduled as well as an update on ongoing Task Groups.

At the January meeting of Scrutiny there would be a presentation from West Lancashire Scrutiny Panel on the Market Town Strategy for Ormskirk. The Skills Agenda would be presented at the February Scrutiny meeting.

Members were informed that the TAMP would come to Scrutiny Committee at least annually for an update and there would also be an annual workshop for district partners to update them on the progress of the TAMP.

Members also discussed the possibility of having a report on the impact of the councils transformation plans on staff at a future meeting.

The Budget Scrutiny Work Group was meeting again on the 12^th January 2017.

Resolved: The Committee approved the 2016/17 work plan.

An item of urgent business may only be considered under this heading where, by reason of special circumstances to be recorded in the Minutes, the Chair of the meeting is of the opinion that the item should be considered at the meeting as a matter of urgency. Wherever possible, the Chief Executive should be given advance warning of any Member's intention to raise a matter under this heading.

There were no items of Urgent Business.

The next meeting of the Scrutiny Committee will be held on 13 January 2017 at 10:00am at the County Hall, Preston.

The next meeting of the Scrutiny Committee will take place on Friday 13^th January 2017 at 10.00am in Cabinet Room B (The Diamond Jubilee Room) at the County Hall, Preston.