Scottish Government

CHAPTER 1 Summary, evaluation and recommendations

Ratings for the 10 areas for evaluation

Glasgow is the largest department providing social work services in Scotland and faces the biggest social and economical challenges of any of the 32 authorities. High levels of poverty and deprivation have led to high levels of demand for services.

The inspection found that social work services were delivering good outcomes for many people. For example the services supported many older people to live in their own homes and helped increasing numbers of people with substance misuse problems back into work or training.

People who used services considered that they were treated with dignity and respect. The overwhelming majority of staff were committed to delivering high quality services.

Senior managers had taken bold steps to improve services. For example, they had implemented a fieldwork review that had resolved their recruitment crisis and had developed a number of integrated services. More recently they had moved along with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde into community health and care partnerships.

The services had taken steps to involve people who used services and carers in planning for services. They had also made provision for some of the most marginalised groups including single homeless people.

There was strong corporate and political support for social work and the council contributed considerable additional funding for social work services. Finances were well-managed.

There were a number of areas where the services needed to make improvements. These included:

• widening the opportunities available to people with learning disabilities;
• improving the poor condition of many social work premises;
• addressing the low morale of staff;
• establishing a consistent approach to determining which non-statutory childcare work to allocate;
• improving use of the management information system;
• developing a change management programme to involve staff more whenever possible in driving through changes to the organisation; and
• retaining a strong strategic core to ensure city-wide consistency of practice.

Recommendations

Key Outcomes

Recommendation 1
The services should take steps to ensure that they provide SCRA with reports within the required timescales.

Recommendation 2
Social work services should work with a range of partners to increase the number of people with learning disabilities who are in work. The priority should be helping people to get open employment.

Impact on people who use our services

Recommendation 3
The services should increase the number of separate carers' assessments they do. They should ensure all carers are offered an assessment.

Recommendation 4
Glasgow City Council should consider how it can improve the poor condition of many of the premises people who use social work services have to use.

Impact on staff

Recommendation 5

Senior managers and elected members need to address the low morale of many of their staff. In order to improve two-way communication with staff they should review their internal communication strategy, build on what they have already introduced and consider what other steps they might take.

Impact on community

No recommendation

Delivery of key processes

Recommendation 6
The services should move more quickly to implement the recommendations of their best value review of standby services.

Recommendation 7
The services should reconsider their decision not to follow national guidance and should find ways to introduce more independence in the chairing of reviews for looked after children.

Recommendation 8
The services need to move quickly to secure the long term future of greater numbers of children in their care. They should build on the good work they have started to do in some parts of the city.

Recommendation 9
As a matter of priority the services should set out a clear framework for determining which non-statutory childcare work to allocate to ensure that there is a consistent approach across the city. They should also ensure that there are robust processes for reviewing unallocated work.

Recommendation 10
The services need to be certain that staff working with children of substance misusing parents are making best use of the services' addiction services. They should make sure that they have robust performance information to evidence this.

Policy and service development, planning and performance management

Recommendation 11
Social work services should review their service level agreement with DACS to ensure that homecare services are sufficiently personalised.

Management and support of staff

Recommendation 12
The services should make sure that practice team leaders are clear about what work requires the professional skills of a qualified social worker and that which social care workers can appropriately carry out. This should include ensuring that they have adequate training on the criteria that they should follow and establishing auditing processes to make sure that they apply these criteria consistently.

Resources and capacity building

Recommendation 13
The services should take steps to improve the use of their management information system. They should establish why there are so many data errors that undermine their ability to monitor and plan services and should make sure that auditing arrangements can quickly identify such errors. They should ensure that staff understand the importance of management information.

Recommendation 14
The services should consolidate the work they have started and develop comprehensive commissioning strategies for each care group.

Leadership and direction

Recommendation 15
Senior managers in Glasgow have had, and continue to have, an ambitious change agenda. It is important that whenever possible they support and involve staff more in owning and driving through changes to the organisation.

Recommendation 16
The services should make sure that the move to CHCPs does not result in unacceptable differences in the level and quality of provision across the city. In order to prevent this they should ensure that they retain a strong strategic core that can ensure that local plans fit within an over-arching vision for services and that can maintain oversight of service standards.