Issue - meetings

That the Quarter 3 Council Plan monitoring report 2018/19 be noted.

The Chief Officer (Social Services) introduced a report providing a summary of the position at Quarter 3 of 2018/19 for the Council Plan priority ‘Supportive Council’ which was relevant to the Committee.

This was a positive report reflecting that 92% of activities were making good progress and 85% likely to achieve the desired outcome.  Risks were being successfully managed with the majority assessed as moderate or minor.  On the percentage of looked after children with a timely health assessment, despite a range of actions, the challenges were continuing and would be raised again at a forthcoming meeting with Health partners.

On the same matter, the Senior Manager, Children and Workforce spoke about the importance of work undertaken by Julie Sproston, the Looked After Children Nurse, whose recent presentation on her role had been well received by the Children’s Services Forum.

The only major risk was on meeting demand for residential and nursing home care bed availability where officers were exploring innovative solutions including co-operative models, however the challenges of recruitment and retention in care provision remained a longer-term problem.

The Senior Manager, Safeguarding and Commissioning provided information on the risk on adult safeguarding referrals which had been upgraded to green following a restructure of the service and review by Internal Audit.  She advised that the Quarter 4 update would reflect the improvements achieved which had been well received during a recent visit by the Care Inspectorate Wales.

Councillor Mackie queried the accuracy of ‘period actual’ and ‘year to date actual’ data on key performance indicators.  The Senior Manager agreed to refer this to the Performance team, adding that some may have been affected by the main activities taking place during the last quarter.

As requested by Councillor McGuill, the Senior Manager, Children and Workforce provided an overview of the joint agency project with North Wales Police which aimed to deliver an Adverse Childhood Experiences informed approach to community policing.  Since completion of the training, there had been a slight reduction in these CID referrals to Social Services.  The Senior Manager agreed to circulate a link to a video clip where Police officers described the impact of the training.

RESOLVED:

That the Quarter 3 Council Plan monitoring report 2018/19 be noted.