Scottish Government

Chapter 6 Management

This chapter looks at three areas for evaluation:

• Policy and service development, planning and performance management
• Management and support of staff
• Resources and capacity building

Policy and service development, planning and performance management

We concluded that performance in this area was adequate with strengths just outweighing weaknesses.

Planning for children's services was well embedded and visible within community planning and there was strong strategic leadership of the service. There was a good range and quality of services for children and young people, but significant gaps in support for care leavers and young carers. Urgent action was needed to improve services for children affected by disability.

The profile for community care services was not so high and the service needed to strengthen planning and policy development. Older people's services were gradually improving from a very low base. Learning disability services needed to be modernised. There were acute shortages of housing for vulnerable adults as well as for care leavers, and there was no supported employment. There were no local resources for people with physical disabilities to help them meet their aspiration to live full and independent lives.

Health and social work were working together to improve the effectiveness of integrated services and to move towards a model of joint care management.

There had been a lot of recent attention given to the development of a performance monitoring framework. Senior managers needed to build on this work and put in place robust measures to monitor performance across services.

Policy review and development

There were comprehensive, up to date plans in place to guide the implementation of East Dunbartonshire's social work vision, strategies and policies. Most important were:

• Working Together - the children and young people's services plan
• The joint community care plan
• A joint strategy for carers
• An annual service plan (part of the community services plan) which covered social work services across child care and community care

There was also a corporate action plan on drugs and alcohol agreed with statutory and voluntary sector partners throughout the Greater Glasgow area. Criminal justice services were working to the priorities set out in the Community Justice Authority area plan as well as the inter-authority criminal justice partnership plan.

Child care

Within children's services we found a range of policies and procedures which had been developed to help staff discharge their responsibilities. This included comprehensive policies and guidance on permanence planning, guidance on case recording, ISMS procedures, GOPR and Hidden Harm protocols and a range of policies for staff in residential units. There was evidence that staff had been involved in their implementation, and residential staff in particular were very positive about the impact of this work in improving care planning. However there was room to improve arrangements for finalising and implementing new procedures.

Child care staff told us that when new policies were introduced there was a system in place for briefing staff and we saw evidence that this was organised methodically.

Youth justice

Within youth justice services there was a clear emphasis on retaining young people in their community and out of prison and this emphasis was reflected in the resources allocated to the voluntary sector and the intensive support and monitoring service, as well as the multi-agency planning and operational meetings concerned with youth justice. Youth justice staff continued working with offenders they knew beyond the age of sixteen and would prepare court reports on young offenders. They told us that they had close working relationships with their colleagues in the criminal justice social work service.

Community care

There were some recent good examples of policy development within community care, although overall this was uneven and did not follow any system for scheduled reviews of policy. Unlike child care, there was no system for briefing staff on policy changes or developments. Staff spoke of being 'bombarded' with new policies in recent months, often communicated by e-mail.

Home care services were reviewed in 2005. This was an important and influential piece of work which resulted in a shift of priorities towards intensive home care and out-of-hours services. Re-enablement and palliative care at home had been given greater emphasis. This fitted well with priorities agreed with health through joint planning. A pilot out-of-hours home care service was in the early stages. This was a good example of an attempt to address key priorities by shifting the balance of care, increasing respite and improving support for carers. A further review of home care was underway. It did not appear to have an approved remit or clear reporting lines.

There were policies on vulnerable adults and eligibility for services, although further work was required on implementation of both. There were other areas in adult services where policy development was weaker and less forward-looking. These included the balance of care for older people and a lack of conviction on the part of senior management that personalised services were affordable.

The service had not concluded a review of learning disability day services which was underway in 2006. We saw from the records of stakeholder events that the need for supported employment for adults affected by addictions, physical disability, learning disability and mental ill-health had been flagged up some time ago. At the time of the inspection the only progress seemed to be plans for further stakeholder events. Issues of supported employment and social inclusion needed to have a higher corporate profile.

Operational and partnership planning

It was clear that stakeholders were positive about social work as partners across all of social work services. We found that child care and criminal justice performed well on operational and partnership planning, whilst there was scope for community care to improve on the pace of progress and on productivity.

The majority of stakeholders (78%) surveyed agreed that there were effective planning structures and processes in place. There was a lower level of agreement (61%) that there was evidence of service improvements being achieved on the basis of joint plans.

We noted that the current service plan looked only one year ahead. We considered that service planning would be improved by the introduction of three year rolling programme which placed a stronger emphasis on the achievement of strategic objectives, alongside the introduction of business plans for individual teams and units outlining operational targets for the coming year. The senior finance and planning manager produced evidence showing that development of three year service plans was on target for completion in May 2008.

Child care

In child care the children's services plan was well set out and had strong connections to the community plan for children and young people. It covered universal and targeted services and met SMART criteria. However, it did not contain any financial information.

Delivering for children and young people was a themed partnership in the community plan and was highly visible across all agencies. This group was the driver for operational and partnership planning. It had a clear sense of purpose and was task-focused. Operational and partnership planning on child protection was strong. In early years, close partnership working together with increased resources helped early identification of vulnerable children. The work of the sub-groups was subject to robust reporting requirements. More attention was needed in these reporting requirements to qualitative measures.

Community care

The recent community care plan set out a clear framework for service development based on national and jointly agreed local policy priorities. It did not contain the service's purchasing intentions. The service plan was well set out. It's implementation would be assisted by a longer term planning horizon and a stronger emphasis on objectives which met SMART criteria, together with links to the three-year financial plan.

We heard from a range of agencies that good progress was being made in partnership working for community care, although several commented that partnership planning lagged behind child care planning.

The main vehicles for partnership planning in community care - the six joint planning and performance implementation groups ( PPIGs) - were not all effective in planning, and this uneven picture was even more marked in performance monitoring and implementation.

Opportunities for user and carer involvement in the PPIGs were variable and there appeared to be no rationale for their participation to be restricted to the mental health and carer groups. The participation of partners from key agencies was also more mixed than might be expected. While representatives from the voluntary sector were involved in sub-groups we thought that they should also have a more prominent role in the main planning groups.

The mental health PPIG had not met for some months at the time of the inspection. The physical disability and sensory impairment PPIG had just met for the first time. The PPIGs for carers, addictions, learning disability and older people were all meeting regularly.

There was a proposal to incorporate a commissioning role into their existing remit. While there was merit in this in principle the very mixed performance of the PPIGs raised serious concerns about their capacity to undertake this role until performance management deficits were addressed.

Recommendation 7
Social work and its partners should review the capacity of the PPIGs to deliver on all three fronts of planning, implementation and performance. There should be attention to consistency in arrangements for stakeholder involvement.

Criminal justice

Planning for criminal justice was taken forward through the North Strathclyde community justice authority. Among the strategic priorities was a strong emphasis on overcoming barriers to employability and there were plans to join with another CJA to resource support for this. The inter-authority criminal justice partnership plan reflected these strategic priorities and included service improvement and local outcome targets.

Involvement of stakeholders in planning and service development

In services for children and families there was limited stakeholder involvement in planning and service development. A young people's forum was recently established as an initial one year pilot and there was some consultation with young people on the children's services plan. Young people were also involved in the development of the new children's residential unit. There was a young carer consultation event in 2007.

Planned improvements/initiatives for 2008-09 include

• questionnaires for young people involved in the child protection system
• development and implementation of a participation strategy for service users
• implementation of an annual consultation event for young people
• development and implementation of a communication and consultation strategy.

These initiatives should bring about an improvement in stakeholder involvement. Despite the consultation event with young carers last year, we thought that this was an area which needed sustained priority. They did not have the capacity as a service to support young people to take up the standing invitation to attend the carers PPIG. The local authority should help young carers to participate by providing dedicated resources for this.

In community care, there were some strengths in engagement with stakeholders. A strategic housing liaison group had been established. This needed to deliver improvements in housing for vulnerable adults, including care leavers. There was also improved opportunities for regular engagement with voluntary sector partners since the establishment of the providers forum in 2007. Private providers felt excluded, however, and had little idea about future plans or policy directions for services. Mechanisms should be found to ensure there is local provider to help plan for, and deliver, service shifts and developments.

More positively, the vulnerable older people's project had included qualitative analysis of older people's experiences of services through surveys of older people vulnerable to hospital admission, and this had influenced the findings and recommendations of the report. There had also been consultation which had resulted in the development of day care for older people from black and ethnic minorities.

Of the 26 stakeholders who responded to our survey, the majority did not agree that people who use services and their carers were properly involved in service planning and development. In particular, some local advocacy organisations with an interest in adult care groups disagreed that this was the case. Negative comments included tokenism in consultation with mental health service users. However, Carers Link considered that there were opportunities for carers and users to become involved, and that there was a commitment and enthusiasm on the part of social work to encourage more involvement by carers.

Home care staff were very positive about user and carer involvement in service planning and development. Other staff groups, including fieldworkers and day care staff, were much less positive.

There were plans to increase stakeholder involvement:

• a number of service development events - addictions, mental health - to which service users were invited
• a pilot of the UDSET (user defined service evaluation toolkit) toolkit by June 2008
• CVS (Council of Voluntary Services) to link with community care providers forum to build planning partnerships with social work, by December 2008

Developing integrated services

Although there were no fully integrated joint teams in child care, there were very good examples of well-developed multidisciplinary practice described earlier in the report. In ISMS there was a 'wrap-around' service ethos which brought social work, education and voluntary sector services together to meet the needs of young people, around the clock if necessary.

In community care there were joint teams for learning disabilities, addictions and mental health. We heard from staff and front-line managers in these teams that they worked well for the most part with their health colleagues. There were, however, unresolved governance issues which we have outlined earlier in the previous chapter. Further attention needed to be given to the balance of professionals in the teams and clarity in terms of what different disciplines could expect of each other.

A major focus of effort and of huge potential significance in advancing whole systems working between health and social work, was the development of a custom-built integrated care centre in Kirkintilloch, opening in 2009. This would combine local health and social work services under one roof. In advance of this, work was in progress to implement a key recommendation of the vulnerable older people's project, to create a single point of entry to health and social care services for older people. Other community care teams will also be based there and it is critical that there is an overview of proposed changes and developments in these, in relation to each other and to making the best use of this opportunity.

We would encourage social work to proactively engage with health partners on the development of integrated care pathways in mental health and their associated national standards. These developments were being taken forward by the health board but there were no plans or clear expectations about how social work were to be involved. Mental health social workers did not feel at all well-sighted on the important implications of these moves towards more integrated practice and processes.

Range and quality of services

We were told that historically there had been a low level of social work services in East Dunbartonshire, and that in recent years priority had been given to developing a range of local services to meet the needs of its population. In the main, this had been more successful for child care with a more mixed picture for community care.

Older people

East Dunbartonshire had relatively low levels of home care provision and its placements in care homes are also at the lower end. There had been a lack of confidence on the part of clinicians in particular that services could support the most vulnerable at home, although this attitude was changing. The consequence had been that older people were admitted to hospital more readily and were being discharged from hospital to care homes. Very encouragingly, action was now being taken by the older people's PPIG to shift the balance of care, with a strong commitment to increasing rehabilitation, intermediate care and anticipatory care. There were signs that evening and weekend home care was increasing, alongside overnight care, which was being delivered by the pilot service.

Day services for older people were being increased through two new-build developments in Milngavie and Lenzie. Although the latter had been delayed for several years, health and social work were taking the opportunity to refocus it in line with new priorities. There was also a dedicated day service for black and ethnic minority older people. The targeting of this service required some attention.

The in house home care service had undergone significant modernisation. There was a strong emphasis on training home care staff to support rehabilitation and re-enablement. This had not yet developed to the stage where home carers contributed to a personalised rehabilitation plan, although this was an expected development. We heard mixed accounts of whether people were waiting for home care services. It appeared that high priority cases were always allocated, although sometimes this could only be achieved by reducing services to other people. We received a number of comments from staff and service users that carers were too rushed, and at times under pressure to cope with heavy demands. The service had a history of using private home care providers as a last resort and had struggled to provide services in the Bearsden and Milngavie areas. It had only recently taken steps to strategically commission external home care for this part of its area.

A wide range of supports were delivered to carers, across all adult care groups, through Carers Link, which was funded by social work. In addition, Carers Link and Ceartas, another voluntary organisation, had proactively collaborated to provide what we thought was an excellent drop-in service called De café, which was open to people affected by dementia, carers and support staff.

We considered that a good, if belated, start had been made in addressing critical issues around the balance of care and whole systems approach to the care of older people. However, the council did not invest highly in services and it will take time and additional resources before current and planned initiatives deliver tangible benefits. In addition, there will be a need for sustained investment to meet the projected increases in older people who are very vulnerable and/or affected by dementia.

Recommendation 8
East Dunbartonshire should review the priority it gives to older people's services and ensure there are sufficient resources to provide a range of support services to meet the needs of its most frail older citizens. Social work should sustain its efforts to improve its delivery of services for older people.

Other adult care groups

We found a number of common themes which diminished the range and quality of services for adults. These included:

• critical shortages of appropriate local housing affecting groups such as people with mental health problems, people with addictions and offenders
• no infrastructure of supported employment for vulnerable groups, and no plans at a corporate level to support its development
• low uptake of direct payments and some evidence that social work were being overly prescriptive and overly bureaucratic in their application and use
• acute shortage of overnight respite and lack of contingency planning with carers for provision in a crisis
• gaps in advocacy (although some of these should be filled following a commissioning exercise not yet concluded at the time of the inspection)

Day services for people with learning disabilities were unmodernised. A large day centre at Kelvinbank was not fit for purpose. Despite an extensive review carried out in 2006 social work were not taking decisive action to move this forward. Opportunities to develop a good range of day opportunities were therefore being missed. Although a good number of people with learning disabilities were supported in their own tenancies, managers told us that many arrangements had resulted from the hospital discharge programme. In some cases they no longer met the needs of individuals and needed to be reshaped.

More positively, social work had appointed two local area co-ordinators who were enthusiastically supporting people with learning disabilities to access mainstream opportunities. As mentioned previously in the report people we spoke to were very positive about this support. We have also mentioned the high regard in which the adult respite service was held. The latter was already stretched and respite was still insufficient to meet the needs of carers.

There were big gaps in services for people with physical disabilities and sensory impairment. People described this area as being neglected by social work. There were not enough services to help people lead independent lives and some spoke of staff from some services, like home care, not understanding the needs of young adults. Some were very positive about the efforts of the social work team, but said there were not the resources to support meaningful care planning. Managers and staff had some sympathy with this view.

Child care

There was a broad range of universal and targeted services available to children and their families. These were found in most parts of the service, and were of good quality.

Youth justice services were well-resourced and performed strongly. There was good evidence of enhanced effectiveness in risk assessment and management through the employment of forensic psychologists in the team.

The intensive support and monitoring service offered intensive support packages tailored to the needs of each individual young person and these were effective in providing an alternative to secure accommodation. It worked in tandem with Includem which provided a 24/7 service and young people we spoke to were particularly positive about this aspect of the service. They praised the flexible nature of the support and staff commitment to them; they attributed reduced offending and increased self-esteem to the impact of the service as a whole.

Other positive examples of the range and quality of services for children included:

• school-based counselling service
• good quality foster care
• extension of the Triple P parenting programme
• refocused residential provision and the work by social work to turn around problems affecting staff morale
• intensive support to vulnerable families
• dedicated home care team for children and families
• protected day care places in early years centres
• day-time respite provided by contracted child-minders
• a children and young people's worker recruited to the addictions team.

We were not convinced that the targeting of resources within children's services was proportionate to need. Some young people receiving support from an intensive service did not strictly meet the criteria for this level of intervention. There were major gaps in services for young people leaving care and children affected by disability. Services for young carers also needed to be expanded.

Young care leavers did not get all the support they needed from the local authority. There was no suitable local accommodation and we met young people who had been placed in a hostel in Govan because of a lack of local provision. The lack of housing increased the risk of homelessness amongst care leavers and made it difficult to support them into training or employment. These were areas of concern for staff. It had only been very recently that the council have begun to look at the possibility of offering opportunities for training or work to care leavers. Deficits in these areas significantly impacted on efforts by staff to meet the needs of these young people and undermined the corporate parenting role of the authority.

There were major gaps in services for children and young people affected by disability. These included poor information about social work services and a chronic shortage of respite of all kinds. It was to the credit of the team concerned that they had taken action to clear waiting lists for assessments. However, there was no infrastructure to meet assessed needs, with the result that they were still waiting for services. As one parent told us, 'it's a constant battle to get any support from them … in East Dunbartonshire there is a shortage of any services for children with complex needs'.

Some parents were unhappy that social work were having to use services in Glasgow or from Glasgow to meet some needs, while others were perplexed as to why more could not be done to jointly resource services with a neighbouring authority like West Dunbartonshire. Our view was that local service solutions can be arrived at by a number of means other than discrete commissioning of a service by social work.

Recommendation 9
Steps should be taken by the local authority to develop more services to meet the needs of disabled children and their families. There should be an options appraisal which tests the possibilities of partnership ventures and builds on those partnership arrangements already in place. Families should be involved in this process.

There were significant gaps in services for young carers. Activities groups for different age bands of young carers were both well attended and highly valued but have had to close for the last three months of the financial year in previous years, because the allocated funding had run out. Managers told us that three year funding had recently been approved to allow the groups to operate all year round. The need to widen the range of supports was recognised and the development of a young carers strategy has been identified as a priority in the community care plan.

Quality assurance and continuous improvement

We heard that it was only in the last year or two that a performance management culture has been actively advanced and supported by social work services. The process of self evaluation in preparation for the inspection had further galvanised this emphasis on planned and managed improvement. A performance framework had been developed over the last year and first attempts had been to populate it.

Social work did not engage in benchmarking to test the quality and cost of its services although they were part of a loose network of other local authorities who came together to share planning and operational experience. We did not find examples of option appraisals being used to improve the organisation or delivery of services, and best value had a low profile. On the other hand, and as outlined earlier in the report, commendable efforts had been made, often at team level, to review and improve effectiveness and efficiency.

In our file reading we saw evidence of regular scrutiny of files by first-line managers, more commonly in child care than community care. Community care managers had conducted a recent audit of files and their findings threw up similar issues to our own. Senior managers told us that the intention is to repeat this exercise at regular intervals.

In criminal justice quality assurance for SERs was to be undertaken to a schedule for performance audit being developed by the CJA. SERs will be audited twice per year and probation and throughcare files will be subject to a similar process.

The criminal justice partnership already had a range of performance management and quality assurance measures in place. There was a quarterly cycle of reporting on the results on various measures to the partnership committee, who could direct improvement activity. There was good compliance with criminal justice national standards in East Dunbartonshire. There was positive reinforcement of expectations in this regard in every case. There was a monitoring sheet to be completed by the worker - subsequently 'sample checked' by the team leader - signing off when standards were met, and if not, why not.

There was a well-developed quality assurance system in place for child protection processes, which covered initial investigation through to case conference meetings. A particularly good recent development was to provide direct feedback on performance against quality assurance measures to the worker and their line manager. Trend data was also reported to the operational child protection group and used to inform training. Adult protection had nothing of this order in place and managers should look into how the system could be adapted to suit.

Quality assurance and performance management for social work services was delivered by a team based in the community services directorate, and managers from both performance management and social work thought that this arms-length arrangement had contributed to the long time it had taken for social work to fully embrace it. It was also true to say that while quality assurance in education was well-resourced within the communities directorate, social work was not. There was no doubt that the internal audit reports on social work services were useful but did not necessarily focus on the most critical aspects of service effectiveness and efficiency in any depth.

We considered that the location and level of resources for this function required review by the council.

Complaints

The social work complaints procedure had been revised in 2006, and this had been supported by staff training. The new procedures encouraged recording of compliments and suggestions, as well as complaints. Prior to this, recording of complaints had been unsystematic and the service had been unable to produce an annual report because its information on complaints was so poor. As a result of improvements in the system, the service was for the first time in a position to analyse and report on a full year's complaints information. Social work complaints were managed corporately by community services as part of the performance improvement function, and improvement in complaints procedures had been driven by an energetic and committed middle manager. The relevant head of service in community services was planning to incorporate the annual complaints report into the social work service plan, but thinking on this did not appear to be well advanced. Up to the time of the inspection, there was no evidence of social work having promoted systematic learning from complaints in order to improve services.

Recommendation 10
East Dunbartonshire should strengthen its arrangements for quality assurance and improvement in social work, both in terms of resources and integration with the management of social work. It should ensure that the outcome of complaints is published and there are processes to ensure learning from complaints.

Management and support of staff

East Dunbartonshire performed to a good standard on management of staff, demonstrating important strengths together with some areas for improvement.

East Dunbartonshire was developing a workforce plan for social work services. They had made good progress in addressing recruitment and retention difficulties They had given strong support to staff appraisal, training and continuous professional development. Constructive absence management practices had reduced staff absences to more acceptable levels.

Staff had been issued with guidance, equipment and training to promote safe working.

Some teams could work more effectively to deliver services and there was evidence of the need for a more targeted approach to staff training.

Recruitment and retention

East Dunbartonshire social work services have largely overcome previous recruitment and retention problems and were developing a workforce planning strategy which will project future workforce requirements for specific areas of service. The advance information included an outline workforce development action plan. This needed to be much more specific about how responsibilities were to be allocated and dates by which tasks were to be completed. Corporately the authority recognised the challenge presented by East Dunbartonshire's demographic profile (projected to include the highest proportion of over 75s in mainland Scotland) and a reducing pool of potential employees.

Social work services had had to deal with significant recruitment and retention difficulties. In 2004, the vacancy rate for social workers was 36.8%. To address this the authority introduced a £4000 retention payment and bought into the then Scottish Executive's 'fast track' social work training programme. This led to some improvements in recruitment but retention rates remained poor. in 2006 council members agreed to increase salaries for team managers, senior social workers social workers and occupational therapists. They also introduced more flexible working, improved training opportunities, workload management and better arrangements for supervision and professional development. The latest figures show vacancy levels for social workers standing at 12.1%, still well above the national figure (7.5%) but nevertheless a substantial improvement over a relatively short period of time. This has been due in part to a successful 'grow your own' policy. Fieldwork staff were concerned that the current single status proposals as they affected qualified social work staff could undermine the progress that had been made.

Recruitment into home care services has improved as a consequence of offering better pay and conditions. However, East Dunbartonshire has experienced persistent difficulties in recruiting home care staff to cover evenings and weekends. They were addressing this both by offering different shift patterns and by the increased contracting out of services.

Staff deployment and teamwork

All staff had job descriptions outlining their main duties and responsibilities. Staff were deployed in dedicated, separately managed teams that included social work staff working together in teams with health and education services staff. Initial contact with the service was through the advice and response team. This comprised a small core team with two team managers for community care and child care, and staff undertaking duty from long-term teams. In recent months long-term staff were called on more often to do duty as there were vacancies in the core team. The managers tried to ensure that staff were not asked to take on assessments or other pieces of work in child care if they came from a community care background, and vice versa, but this was not always practical. There was an acknowledgement from management that despite a regularly up-dated improvement plan to keep on top of problems, there were still inefficiencies in team processes and it was difficult to quality assure practice and assessments when staff changed so often.

We found that in some child care teams caseloads were low compared to caseload allocations in some of the other authorities we have inspected. Community care teams seemed to be under more pressure from higher caseloads and waiting lists. The exception to this was the addictions team of 19 operational staff, which we thought large for the size and prevalence profile of the area. We thought that too much was expected of the team manager, between managing a large inter-disciplinary team and having a substantial development role for the service and substance misuse more generally.

Other managers told us about their difficulty in 'multi-tasking' across operational, planning, team development and quality assurance fronts because of a shortage of 'back-room support'. There was quite a large number of planning and commissioning staff, but this team had gaps in service areas. Team members approached similar commissioning and contracting tasks differently, and this team could be more effectively deployed to support operational teams.

We thought that too many health and social work teams were concerned with the care of older people. We found that staff unsure about which team did what. The head of service acknowledged that the remits of these teams were not well co-ordinated. A stakeholder event last year revealed widespread confusion about the role of the hospital assessment team. Senior managers told us that the teams for older people were the subject of a joint review.

In view of the findings outlined above relating to the deployment of staff across a number of different teams, we felt that action on a broader front was needed.

Recommendation 11
Social work should review whether staff resources are being deployed to optimum effect and what planning/development and quality assurance infrastructure is needed to support operational effectiveness and efficiency.

Supervision

East Dunbartonshire had recently introduced a framework for delivering effective staff support (1 April, 2007). This included sections on supervision, caseload management, staff training and development and attendance management. It also contained checklists for each section and returns to be completed and forwarded to senior managers. There were pre and post discussion templates for managers to use with staff in examining their training and development needs Staff were aware of the framework and some were using it (it had not yet been fully implemented).

Sixty-seven per cent of those staff who responded to our staff survey agreed that they received an adequate level of supervision whilst 19% did not (the remainder neither agreed nor disagreed). Of the 19% who did not agree, day care staff were the most strongly represented. During the fieldwork most staff we met said that they received regular, well structured supervision and it was clear that staff were aware of the emphasis that was being placed on it by managers.

Absence management

The authority was pursuing absence management pro-actively. All social work staff had had absence management training and everyone received a 'healthy return' interview after an absence. The head of social work had issued guidance to re-enforce the enactment of the absence management policy.

The highest levels of absence (33.71%) from 2006 were compounded by the recruitment and retention problems outlined above. There were particularly high sickness absence rates in residential children's services and home care. The positive reductions in staff absence rates in both of these services had been achieved by HR and the acting service manager working very closely together. The latter half of 2007 saw the lowest recorded levels of absence among these staff groups.

The most recent figures showed absence rates for social work as a whole running at around 7.5% compared with 5.1% for all council departments. During our fieldwork, staff confirmed that they were aware of the absence management policy and said that it was being applied in a constructive way with referral to a range of services to assist with progress back to work where necessary.

Staff training and development

In recent years East Dunbartonshire has given the important area of staff training and development a much higher profile. The need to do so was recognised in the actions taken in 2004 to address the crisis in recruitment and retention and since then a considerable amount has been done to take the training and development agenda forward.

The service introduced a social work training strategy which applied to both social work and social care staff in November 2007. The strategy was developed by a training and development steering group to agree priorities for training and development with reference to priorities identified by teams as well as external requirements. These were identified as registration, re-registration and continuous professional development ( CPD). There was a commitment to giving staff the opportunity to apply for funding to undertake qualification based training including SVQs and PQs. There was provision for staff induction at three levels. Training plans linked with service plans and a training needs analysis had to be completed every year and fed into the process. There was a reference to the need to evaluate the quality and impact of training.

We found evidence of a growing investment in training and a commitment to staff support in line with Changing Lives. Managers allocated a considerable amount of staff time to training and development. Child care and community care each identified priority training needs for their staff which were then scheduled to occur over 24 days each year. This was in addition to staff attending conferences, their 2-day residential event and any corporate training. Child care had a well-established system of briefings for staff when new policies were introduced. There were also plans for protected reading/learning time for staff and for practitioner research and journal groups.

While staff appreciated these opportunities, as outlined in Chapter 4, the issue for them and for front-line managers was the time to attend them. Despite the fact that the performance management framework had not been fully rolled out front-line managers told us that they had been feeding in priorities identified for their team, to the 24-day priority setting process. They said that they normally got the training they asked for with no difficulty. Training for trainers was not well developed.

There was a need for managers to think more strategically about how they made training opportunities available. There was one training officer for social work and no other infrastructure support. As yet little had been done to establish whether this wide range of training was making a positive difference.

Resources and Capacity Planning

We found performance in this area to be adequate with strengths just outweighing weaknesses.

We found budget setting arrangements to be generally good and the budget monitoring process to be robust. We had particular concerns about the levels of spend on services for older people.

The local authority had made good progress in embedding its risk management processes within the organisation. Management of information for planning as well as monitoring purposes, was making progress.

We found the spirit of partnership working to be strong across all social work services, but structures and systems to support effective partnership, while good in child care and criminal justice, were not as good in community care.

Commissioning arrangements were being driven by a significant improvement agenda, much of which should have been acted on before.

Financial plans

The overall budgeted spend for Social Work as a whole (£98.2m) was lower than GAE (£100.3m) for the three years to 2007-08, however the budget had increased substantially (by 41%) over the past five years, primarily due to the restructuring of the Communities Directorate bringing additional functions into Social Work.

Also for the 3 years to 2007-08, the budget for older people was below GAE (by 28%), and in Children & Families, and Adults with physical disabilities, etc., the budget was higher than GAE (by 138% and 32% respectively).

The proportion of the social work budget for 2007-08 allocated to children's services was close to the Scottish average, but the pattern has been for spend significantly in excess of this. In contrast, the proportion of the budget allocated to older people was significantly lower than the Scottish average (42% against 48%) and the social work budgeted spending per adult aged 65 or over was very much lower than the Scottish average (£785 against £1,293, placing East Dunbartonshire 32nd out of 32 Councils). We were informed that approximately £4m of additional funding had come from the Resource Transfer funding following the closure of 2 hospitals.

Over the last three years, the service's spend per child looked after was amongst the highest compared to those for Scotland as a whole (third out of 32 local authorities). In 2007-08 the service budgeted spend per child was £78,149 compared to the Scottish average of £39,777. We found that the main area of expense was residential care, but at the time of the inspection there was a move towards providing intensive care at home and this was expected to reduce costs considerably. The service had also been concerned about losing foster carers to external agencies and other authorities, and as a result had increased its payments to the existing carers. At the time of the inspection the local authority was undertaking a three-year programme to develop better community-based child care.

Contrary to the above-noted high spend per child looked after, the budgeted spend per child aged 17 or under was significantly lower than the Scottish average. In 2007-08 the service's average spend per child was one of the lowest in the country (£344 against an average of £533 - 30th out of 32 local authorities).

In general, we found room for improvement in the links between the operational service plans and the financial plans.

The financial plan, as part of the overall Corporate Development Plan for the years 2005 to 2007, indicated that the local authority was undertaking a 3-year financial strategy covering the period 2005-06 to 2007-08. The strategy was to identify the key financial objectives of the authority, summarise the current financial position and reflect a range of cost initiatives which would impact on the implementation of the Corporate Development and Financial Plans.

We noted that forward financial planning was considered through a Strategic Review Group. However at the time of our inspection, a comprehensive service plan with clear budget links had not yet been drafted beyond 2007-08. As noted earlier in the report, they were on schedule to produce a three year plan for 2008-11 but this was not due for completion until after the inspection. The authority believed that the development of the Corporate Planning and Improvement Framework would establish stronger links between corporate, service and financial plans. Additionally, the Policy and Planning Manager had recently produced guidance to services on service planning. The release of the Scottish Government's three-year financial settlement figures at the end of 2007 had led to a delay in progressing the three-year plan for 2008/2011. Managers indicated that savings/efficiencies would be considered in March 2008 and that the 3-year plan would be progressed thereafter.

The budget setting process acknowledged a range of financial pressures facing the local authority which needed to be addressed in balancing the budget and setting the council tax. These included the revenue implications of increased home care and free personal care costs.

The longer term financial position of the local authority in years 2008-09 onwards was expected to be tight. The budget was set for 2008-09 with a projected funding shortfall of £5.522m and general reserves were being utilised to fund the shortfall. For the following 2 years where there were further estimated funding shortfalls the level of efficiencies and savings required had still to be analysed in detail. We also noted that an all party budget working group had been set up to find a 'follow-up strategy' for 2009-10 and 2010-11.

Budgetary control

There were Social Work net underspends of £691k in 2005-06 and £344k in 2006-07. Data presented to members in March 2008 indicated a budget underspend of £720k as at 20 January 2008, but it was forecast that the service would break even as at 31 March 2008.

Regular monitoring statements were submitted to Committee on a six-weekly basis informing members of the revenue budget performance to date. Although predicting a break-even situation as at 31 March 2008, there had been significant budget pressures to overcome and it was clear that the service's budget monitoring process was robust. We found that reports provided to Committee were sufficiently detailed in terms of explanations for major variances and the action to be taken to address overspends was appropriately summarised.

Within social work services, financial management and support was provided by both a dedicated finance team and the corporate strategic function. Working relationships between the relevant finance staff and budget managers were good. They held regular meetings, and advice on budgetary control matters could be requested from an appropriate finance officer at any time. Budgets required to be continually reconfigured in order to avoid specific cost pressures but the budget holders interviewed believed they worked hard to sustain the necessary level of service within the budget limitations presented.

Four-weekly budget monitoring reports and weekly commitment reports were provided to budget managers across the service and budget managers also received monthly detailed staff lists. The data provided to the budget holders was sufficient to enable them to properly monitor their budgets and the budget holders interviewed acknowledged the advantage of receiving the information electronically and timeously.

Budget holders interviewed told us that their involvement in the annual budget preparation process had increased recently, with an updated budget setting process allowing budget holders an opportunity to discuss issues. In particular budget holders were invited to highlight 'areas of unmet need' and were also given some flexibility in identifying necessary savings.

We were of the view that liaison between management and front-line budget holders was generally good; however more involvement from the budget holders in the budget setting process would ensure budgets are properly formulated and achievable, and that budgetary control was well managed thereafter.

The main forum for discussion of budgetary control issues within social work was the fortnightly meetings of the Corporate Management Team ( CMT). Financial reports were presented regularly by the Head of Finance & ICT and discussions took place regarding reasons for budget variances, projected year-end outturn and the actions to be taken to address potential overspends. Updates on the financial position of social work services were also regularly considered by the social work senior management team ( SMT) where more detailed discussion took place on budgetary control.

We comment on partnership financial management in the 'Partnership Arrangements' section below.

Capital expenditure/planning

We found that East Dunbartonshire's Capital Plan covered only 2007-08 and 2008-09. Beyond 2008/09, the local authority aspired to have a more comprehensive plan in place and a recent report to Committee agreed to move to a longer-term capital programme, possibly ten years.

We noted from the two-year plan that social work capital projects included '4th Children's unit, top up' (£430k) and 'Oakburn Park Day Centre' (£300k). The social work share of the capital programme was considered fair with a number of large projects either recently completed or currently under development.

There was a capital bidding process in which social work participated and budget holders were also involved in the consultation process. The Corporate Asset Management Group, recently established to co-ordinate the capital planning process, analysed the capital bids after reviewing priorities across the council and made recommendations on capital investment to council.

Quarterly capital monitoring reports were submitted to the Social Services Committee and then consolidated into a general services capital report presented to the Policy and Resources Committee. We noted that variance explanations provided in these reports were brief. We also noted that slippage of £0.8m was anticipated in the £1.1m 2007/08 capital budget for Children's Unit Number 4 due to tender documentation not being issued until January 2008.

Income

A report reviewing Fees and Charges was submitted to the Social Services Committee in June 2004. Committee approved the service bringing its charging policy for home care services into line with COSLA's recommendations. The level of fees and charges were reviewed annually.

We were informed that the local authority charged for all services wherever reasonable but that a new charging policy was to be implemented by July 2008 including the possibility of charging for day care and transport.

Elected members role

It is important that reports to elected members are clear, complete and unambiguous in order that, as the ultimate decision makers within local government, they may base their decisions on full and clear information.

Revenue Monitoring statements were produced on a 6-weekly basis to inform the Social Services Committee of the current year revenue budget performance to date and variance analyses were provided where necessary together with a brief note of action to be taken to address overspends. Officers provided informal briefings to members in advance of committee meetings where requested We were satisfied with the frequency of finance related reports to members and we considered that the content of the reports was satisfactory. Nevertheless some elected members told us that more could be done to make the reports clearer and easier to interrogate.

Financial training had been given to newly elected Members, with particular emphasis on how to determine courses of action relating to budget pressures. Additional training had also been provided since then at the request of individual members.

Financial Skills within Social Work Services

There were 3 defined activities within social work - Children & Young People, Community Care, and Planning, Performance & Finance ( PP&F). The PP&F section supported the operational remit of the department by ensuring effective co-ordination of finance, policy, planning, etc. across all ranges of social work responsibility.

Officers, mainly at unit level and above, held budgetary control responsibility for the social work budget, however there had been a recent 'pilot' of devolving budgets further to front line workers allowing them a degree of autonomy in agreeing some care packages, thus allowing them to respond to need much quicker.

The financial skills applicable to social work staff were considered to be adequate in terms of quantity and quality and the budget holders we met were satisfied with the support received from the finance staff. Only minimal guidance and training beyond basic induction training had been provided to budget holders in terms of financial management. However, representatives from both corporate finance and social work finance were present at the monthly meetings of the SWSMT and advice could be obtained from an appropriate finance officer at any time. Budget managers felt that the financial management support provided by finance staff had improved significantly in recent years.

Resource management

Asset management plan ( AMP)

An asset management plan gives clarity about balancing service needs and available capital resources. It informs a sound capital planning process linking service priorities and objectives.

We noted that the local authority had appointed a corporate asset manager and was in the process of developing a corporate asset management plan. It was also noted that a corporate asset management group had been established to coordinate the capital planning processes, etc.

We were informed that progress was being made in drawing up a corporate asset register and that a full survey of all properties would be concluded by July 2008. The authority had acquired a new software programme to develop this further. The corporate asset management group was due to progress the development of a corporate asset management plan thereafter. Therefore, effective asset management arrangements were not yet in place.

It is difficult to be clear about the capital needs and optimum utilisation of the assets of the service without an AMP that facilitates the production of a capital plan and which is linked to the service priorities and objectives. However, it was acknowledged that East Dunbartonshire was developing its approach to asset management planning and working towards embedding asset management across services.

Risk management

The Corporate Risk Management Strategy setting out the local authority's formal approach to managing risk was endorsed by the CMT and the Audit Sub-Committee in April 2005 . It was agreed that risk registers would be developed at service level and that the CMT be kept informed of the general progress by way of quarterly meetings.

The authority had made good progress in embedding its risk management processes with operational risk registers being established for individual service areas. We reviewed the risk register for social work services and noted that risk reports/action plans were generated for each area of risk covering the assessment of risk, actions identified to mitigate the risks and a quantification of the cost and impact of risks. Additionally, the authority had in place a Business Continuity Management Programme that included social work business continuity risks and critical processes as at October 2006.

Corporate risk reports were submitted to CMT for discussion and the Audit and Risk Sub-Committee received regular reports on performance and progress in improving the risk management arrangements.

It was apparent, therefore, that risk management was well embedded at both corporate and social work service level.

Health and safety

The authority's Health & Safety Policy was revised in January 2003 and stated that all directors were responsible for preparing and revising their own departmental health & safety policy. We noted that there was no policy specific to social work services but we were advised that an updated version of the Social Work Master Safety File was distributed to social work premises in late 2006. The corporate document also stated that directors should prepare an annual report evaluating the health and safety performance of their department. Social work services were unable to produce the most recent annual report.

Officers informed us that the Health & Safety Policy was cascaded to appropriate staff through the induction process.

The authority had a joint management/employee Health & Safety Committee that convened regularly to discuss, resolve and promote health and safety issues through a formal communication process. There was also a forum for managers below heads of service to meet, collect information and present reports. Previously there was a dedicated Social Work Health & Safety Group but this was seen as duplication across the services and, from November 2007, a combined Social Services and Education Health and Safety Committee was established.

Management information systems

At corporate level East Dunbartonshire employed 'Covalent' software for capturing performance data on statutory indicators, but we were told that the system as a whole was not being used to it's full potential. There was to be a re-launch and further training this year.

Social work had invested in Carefirst as their primary source of management information on service activity trends and unmet need. They have had plans in place since 2005 setting out how they will incrementally purchase modules to build up MIS functionality. There had been lengthy delays in introducing the finance and home care modules.

A steering group, chaired by the head of social work, had been meeting regularly since 2006 to introduce much-needed strategic thinking and disciplined planning into project managing Carefirst implementation.

Like many other local authorities, the early MIS focus was skewed toward the statistical data required for statutory performance reporting. They have had to work hard at improving the reliability and quality of their data. Performance data for statutory reporting purposes were produced by information development staff and helpfully pointed out whether an adverse trend has persisted from one report to the next. A traffic light system has been introduced to promote positive action when gaps or data quality problems have persisted or when performance has not been good. Service managers were responsible for the quality of data and addressing any performance issues. There were still a number of short-comings in what information the current system was capturing and a number of reports from as recently as 2007 flagged up issues of data reliability. This seemed to be more of a problem in adult services than child care, despite reports of regular validation exercises.

There were some signs of a more strategic approach and a growing appetite for adding value to core data by including information requirements which could be separated out for service planning and practice improvement purposes.

All social work staff in the field teams had access to a desk top computer. We found during the file reading that Carefirst was being routinely used. We found auditing of cases was made more complicated by the limitations of the Carefirst categories available to workers. There was no category for a straightforward contact between a worker and service user, for example - these were variously categorised as assessments or reviews.

Plans were well advanced for child care staff to have mind-mapping software in order to aid analysis of child protection cases in particular.

Electronic information sharing between statutory partners was at an early stage across services. In joint adult social work and health teams health staff have had access to Carefirst since 2006 and have been expected to input to the system since that time. There was an undertaking that this would not replace their clinical recording practice which would continue as before. Both health and social work occupational therapists were able to access catalogue resources on-line and they also had palm-tops for recording of simple assessments. These two had not been combined to stream-line and speed up the process, as other local authorities have done. We were told that problems with the palm-tops in particular, had slowed up the process.

There was no direct interface between the IT systems used by social work, health or education. The new-build integrated care centre posed considerable challenges to make health and local authority systems compatible. ICT requirements for the new centre are complex and have been prioritised for project management by the local authority.

Criminal justice management have had the right to access and input to the police VISOR system since 2006, but this has proved to be technically problematic. The police told us that they were disappointed that more had not been made of the system by social work, but the service manager said that the technical difficulties could not be resolved at a local level.

An information sharing protocol had been in place between East Dunbartonshire and the health board since 2005 but this was to be superseded by developments on systematic data sharing. East Dunbartonshire is one of seven local authorities in a data sharing partnership with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and Strathclyde Police. The partnership forum had been meeting for a year at the time of the inspection and a partnership Manager had been appointed. A draft leaflet had been produced which set out the rights of the public and the 'duty of care' obligations of the local authority and health, together with independent and voluntary sector service providers. The suggested starting point for achieving electronic data sharing is single shared assessments on adults, followed by a multi-agency messaging data store relating to child protection. The first phase is due to commence in 2008.

Another important development was the planned opening of a corporate out-of-hours call centre later this year. East Dunbartonshire has lagged behind some other authorities in relation to creative use of assistive technology to support people to remain safely in their homes as an alternative to institutional care. Although they had a pilot SMART Technology pilot in 2006 this was small-scale. Since then, the operational focus has been on the first generation-type community alarm service. The stumbling-block to extending telecare was the need to up-grade their call centre equipment and increase technical capacity, which the new call centre should resolve.

As well as providing the launch-pad for telecare development, managers told us that it hoped to maximise the value of the call centre through monitoring the whereabouts and promoting the safety of staff working out of hours.

Staff did not seem convinced about the efficiencies and other advantages of being co-located as part of a multi-purpose corporate facility. The local authority should have a dialogue with staff delivering services out of hours, both to hear what they say about current problems, and also to ensure that staff know about management plans regarding improvements and opportunities offered by the new centre.

Partnership arrangements

Partnership arrangements with health

A partnership agreement between East Dunbartonshire and NHS Greater Glasgow was approved in May 2004. This was to have been the basis for forming the first Community Health and Social Care Partnership in the Greater Glasgow area. A joint Finance Support Group was established to develop and implement joint financial arrangements between the two partners and an integration manager was appointed.

At a point when plans were well advanced East Dunbartonshire took the decision not to proceed and a long period of complex and difficult de-coupling followed. The Community Health Partnership ( CHP) for East Dunbartonshire came on stream in April 2006 and this was a watershed in putting health and social work on a fresh partnership footing. From a difficult inherited position we consider that the head of social work and the director of the CHP have shown commitment to, and progress in, productive partnership working.

The local authority had a joint planning infrastructure but that it was only in the early stages. There was also a joint planning forum which included elected members and directors of the partners involved, however this forum met only infrequently. Therefore little reporting, financial or otherwise, had occurred to date.

This forum was also the body with responsibility, through a Joint Executive Group, for the joint planning, performance and implementation groups. In Chapter 6 we expressed concern about the uneven performance of these groups and the lack of leadership from health and social work in this regard.

The authority had some 'pockets of budgets' for joint working such as mental health and addictions but co-ordination between the partners was uneven across services. Social work and the CHP had jointly commissioned an independent organisation to research and make recommendations on the modernisation and re-design of mental health services. There were also discussions between the Health Board and the local authority as to how budgets across the piece would be aligned but at the time of the inspection very little progress had been made in this area. While there were areas of joint working within the authority the financial/budget monitoring needs of joint working required to be further developed. There was no joint management group overseeing budgets and financial planning.

The director of the CHP was clear that progress had been uneven, but said that there had been changes for the better in how social work and health came together strategically and operationally. There was a shared willingness to harmonise their strategic priorities and to align their planning processes.

The Kirkintilloch Integrated Care Centre will be a key development with enormous potential to improve the experience of service users with cross-cutting health and social care needs. Sustained hard work, not least in maintaining a commitment to open exchange, will be necessary to keep this venture a truly joint one. This had not been fully tested at the time of the inspection.

Children's services

The strategic link between education, social work and other key partners was the Delivering for Children and Young People themed partnership, described earlier in the report. The child protection committee had been merged into what had previously been the core children's planning group. We felt that this had given partnership working in child protection momentum through shared priority, and this was evident from the quality of joint training, joint procedures and joint working between the agencies.

We also felt that partnership working had gone from strength to strength in other areas of child care:

• Protocols between health and social work on looked after and accommodated children who were at risk of exclusion from school
• The multi-agency GIRFEC arrangements
• The wrap-around support and supervision afforded by all the agencies concerned in delivering ISMSs
• The planning, monitoring and joint working to promote the well-being of children affected by parental substance misuse
• The commitment shown by all agencies to meet regularly to review current activity and what further steps should be taken, to avoid escalation of offending behaviour by young people.

Despite this positive picture, we did feel that this busy partnership landscape still had neglected corners where there was not a track record of success in improvement. With partners coming together so frequently we felt that more should have been done to focus on those areas previously highlighted - children affected by disability, care leavers and young carers.

Criminal justice

East Dunbartonshire had formed a longstanding criminal justice partnership with West Dunbartonshire and Argyle and Bute. This was overseen by a partnership committee with decision making powers delegated from the three local authorities.

The implementation of the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Act 2005 entailed the establishment of the Northern Strathclyde CJA, which aligned Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire and Inverclyde with the three local authorities in the existing criminal justice partnership. The partnership committee decided to continue the pre-existing partnership and to have joint representation at the new CJA. Local accountability was seen by criminal justice managers as a key issue.

We would acknowledge the progress and achievements of the criminal justice partnership. It had succeeded in establishing and running partnership services, including throughcare and community service, across three local authority areas. After some initial difficulties the partnership was also about to begin delivering the Constructs ¹⁰ probation groupwork programme. There had also been a series of joint staff training initiatives.

In our view the partnership functioned well despite the complex governance arrangements. The fit with the wider CJA was less certain however and partnership managers we spoke to found it difficult to envisage similar levels of successful integration across all six of the CJA authorities.

Commissioning arrangements

Commissioning plans should identify the needs of the local population, and set out proposals for meeting those needs. East Dunbartonshire has expanded the range of purchased and provided services but had done so in the absence of strategic commissioning arrangements. The very significant range of developments which had been taking place in the planning and commissioning team since the publication of the McLelland report in 2006 ¹¹ should deliver important improvements. We found that some developments had taken a long time to progress but many changes were coming to the fore at the time of the inspection. The absence of a commissioning strategy and aligned team development plan could mean that important areas for improvement would not be linked together.

Service-wide commissioning

We found evidence of increased and productive collaboration between social work and colleagues in corporate procurement around service commissioning and contracting over the last year. Staff were implementing a procurement framework at the time of the inspection. There were clear indications that the framework had the potential to result in more stability and increased efficiency to current arrangements for purchasing services or placements. Social work were in the process of examining the experience of other local authorities in this regard.

We saw some evidence of tendering for services where there was a perceived gap in availability, for example residential respite care for adults with learning disabilities and homelessness accommodation services. A tender had recently been awarded to a private provider to deliver home care in part of the council area specifically for evening and weekends. At the time of the inspection, the service had advertised a tender for single advocacy service (excluding carers and young people) with a view to increasing service availability and quality.

However, we did not find evidence that this was part of a consistent and planned approach to enabling a mixed economy of care.

Staff began work in 2006 to develop a commissioning strategy. Progress on this had been slow, despite external involvement to support its development. There were no current joint commissioning strategies in place and there was limited joint discussion on what services need to be commissioned or decommissioned. Where services had been commissioned we found little evidence of commissioning for outcomes.

We considered that senior managers needed to develop clearer links between the role of the performance and planning groups and decision-making in relation to the reshaping and commissioning of services. This was being progressed in the PPIG for older people. We thought the proposal to include a commissioning group linked to each planning and performance implementation group to support service development and redesign had merit. Nevertheless we were equally clear that this should not be attempted until there has been a review of the current remit and performance of the PPIGs, along with consideration of what dedicated commissioning officer support would be required from health and social work.

Social work had recently set up a project board to oversee the delivery of a commissioning strategy. We thought this could be improved by including representation from other stakeholders including partner agencies, service users and carers.

Recommendation 12
Social work should move quickly to complete and implement their commissioning strategy. This should involve consultation with key stakeholders.

Contracting and contract compliance

There was a number of staff within the planning, commissioning and contracting section. Most of these staff had a broad remit within adult services. Their roles often included a development function for specific care groups. There were no designated staff for children's services or for addictions at the time of the inspection.

A recently introduced contracting framework, which was still in draft at the time of the inspection, set out the roles and responsibilities of staff and linked to the contract monitoring process. The timescale for full implementation was late summer. A contract compliance section was to be established to focus on the creation and monitoring of contracts for all purchased services. Current services were to be reviewed. This would support a more business like approach to contracting and put in place a more strategic evaluation of purchased services. A model service specification had been drafted and was out for consultation.

A database for purchased services aimed to provide at-a-glance directory of availability and quality, the latter to include any warnings about investigations or other concerns. The level of monitoring applied linked to ADSW contract risk indicators. The process did not overlap with the care commission processes and therefore tried to reduce the burden on providers.

Developments such as those outlined above have the potential to improve standards. At the time of the inspection, staff within the team were addressing their contracting role in different ways. Several contracts or service level agreements lacked clear service specification, reporting requirements or evidence of strategic fit with the priorities of the service. Many were still in draft form several months after the service start date. Services which had funding from both health and social work made no mention of joint monitoring or liaison.

In order to realise the full potential of these developments, consideration should be given to the training needs of staff with direct or indirect involvement, and to performance management measures to keep track of the difference these changes make.

Sixty-seven per cent of stakeholders in our survey said that there were effective arrangements in place for reviewing service provision. Most service providers we met told us that they were clear about contract monitoring arrangements and they were very positive about their relationship with the planning and commissioning team. A minority had been providing a service or placement for some time but had not been subject to any review.

Planning staff attended some services to assess suitability for individual placements but the on-going monitoring of suitability and quality rested with social workers. Some planning staff had developed services on the basis of good consultation processes and scoping of need, but then found themselves with operational management responsibility because of lack of capacity on the operational side to take this on. Some operational staff said that links with planning colleagues could be more structured and more clearly concerned with promoting collaboration in service planning and development.