Decision details

Ms Karen Smith, Director of Adult Services presented an update on the current status and developments in the care sector for Blackpool. The update included residential and nursing provision, regulated placements, care at home services and other ongoing work and plans.

She referred to the Care Quality Commission, the national regulator responsible for inspecting health and social service providers including care homes and care at home. The Commission had rated Blackpool well against regional and national peers for residential and nursing provision and also care at home in February 2018.

The Commission provided monthly feedback and was impressed with the support provided, for service providers, especially by the Council’s Quality Monitoring Team.

The Team aimed to ensure that providers did not run into difficulties and encouraged providers to seek help early, e.g. managing limited resources better for a quality service. Structured support could include training opportunities, effective recruitment and feedback from families could be used to help improve services.

Enforcement action was taken if providers did not improve, e.g. they could be suspended from taking on new packages or clients and if necessary contracts were withdrawn.

Some case studies of work had been included which showed the challenges and effective range of action taken.

Ms Smith referred to the current re-tendering exercise for ‘care at home’ provision. The exercise had involved a range of professionals, e.g. social workers and health staff considering needs and options to design a new specification. A realistic practical approach was being developed working with care providers. She reported that a new Extra Care Housing provider had been awarded the contract for this service.

Ms Smith referred to regional benchmarking of Adult Social Services and reported that Blackpool had performed well particularly with people feeling that they could easily access good support.  There were a few areas where performance was less good compared to others such as people being admitted to homes on a ‘permanent’ basis and delayed transfers of care from health services to social care.

Some of these were national issues but were being looked at with various initiatives, e.g. extra staff investment over the Christmas period. She added that this had meant no people were waiting for packages of care but there were growing challenges such residential beds for people with challenging behaviour with dementia.  She referred to integrated work between social care and health services, New Models of Care (through neighbourhood hubs housing a range of professionals working together) and the Better Care Together fund.

Ms Smith highlighted that the focus was on preventing people needing to go to hospital in the first place and promoting independent living.

Ms Smith referred to fee rates for Adult Social Care contracts. Work had taken place closely with providers to ensure that best value was secured. 

Members noted that care at home provision had been rated highly by the Care Quality Commission and Ms Smith clarified that all seventeen providers had been rated as good. Members queried what was being done to promote improvement at the residential nursing homes requiring improvement and how often monitoring visits took place.

Ms Smith explained that the Commission shared draft inspection information and ratings which allowed the Quality Monitoring Team to visit providers, discuss the improvements required and actions proposed. The aim was to help providers to improve although in some cases they would be suspended from taking on new clients and, in the worst cases, contracts were terminated. Support to deliver improvement actions was ongoing. The Team also took on board feedback from residents and staff.  They would visit providers at least annually but more if there were perceived risks or their track record needed improving.

Members expressed concerns that a person who was very vulnerable was not accessing support that might be available for basic needs. Ms Smith explained that if people were deemed to have mental capacity to make their own decisions then it was not possible to generally intervene unless they requested help. It was important to make people aware of services available to them. Social Care would undertake a needs-based assessment allowing support to be tailored which could include shopping and looking after other needs.

She added that there was a range of support available including for people needing care after being discharged from hospital. She explained that nearly half of supported people did not need to pay for the care following the means test. Blackpool had a high rate of poverty so people were assisted as such.

A representative of the Blackpool Carers’ Centre added that there was a range of voluntary care support available too, particularly if people did not meet social care criteria. She added that the Centre helped provide support and training for carers themselves. Ms Smith added that the Council worked closely with the Carers’ Centre as well as other partners such as Blackpool Clinical Commissioning Group.