Issue - meetings

(a)       That the overall assessment that we are well placed in preparing for the implementation of the Act; and

(b)       That the Committee receive regular updates about implementing the Act and gives further consideration to how elected Members can support the core principles and key messages of the Act.

The Chief Officer introduced an update on the fundamental changes in the policy and legislative framework which underpinned the Council’s work to prepare for implementation of the Social Services and Wellbeing (Wales) Act from 6 April 2016.  The legislation was important not only to Social Services but also to wider services and its extensive scope included new responsibilities for councils and health boards on transforming service delivery.  The legislation would be implemented through a phased approach and would change expectations between service providers and service users by providing support at an earlier stage to encourage longer independent living.

The Senior Manager: Commissioning and Performance said that the Council was well placed to prepare for the incoming Act and detailed the key principles, as set out in the report, to be implemented on completion of the formal consultations.  These were linked to the ‘What Matters’ assessment, the development of the Single Point of Access (SPOA) system and the new regional Dewis portal.  To explain more about the aim of the Act, the Committee was shown a brief animation clip entitled ‘What matters to you - matters to us’ available on the Social Services Improvement Agency (SSIA) website.

Although some details were still awaited from the Welsh Government (WG), the Council had already begun preparations through a range of training sessions aimed at raising basic awareness with staff with more targeted training for practitioners.  The Workforce Development Manager encouraged Members to access details on the Act via the Care Council for Wales information and learning hub, of which a link would be made available.  She spoke about the Council’s involvement in the SSIA pilot initiative on outcome focussed training and the rollout of nationally commissioned training modules in February 2016.

The Occupational Therapist Senior Practitioner from the First Contact and Intake team delivered a presentation on actions which had been taken to address the increase in referral rates and decreased resources.  She described improvements to the team structure and the trialling of integrated assessment documentation which had been well received, and gave example case studies where the team had worked with individuals to identify and resolve underlying issues to achieve the outcomes expressed by those individuals.

The Information Officer provided details on the Dewis portal which offered a range of information on the requirements of the Act and shared copies of newsletters on the system and SPOA.  The Dewis portal had been live since September 2015 and would be publicly launched in February 2016 to coincide with further information on the Act.  A link to the Dewis Cymru website was included in the report and Members were offered the opportunity for a practical demonstration after the meeting.

Whilst Councillor Dave Mackie welcomed the layout of the report in clarifying the 11 key proposed changes from the Act, he pointed out that links to background documents should be accessible to allow proper consideration.  He felt that presentations should be based on information already given to Members rather than new information, and that the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 48