Issue - meetings

As detailed in the recommendation.

Councillor Christine Jones introduced the Social Services Annual Report and explained that the Statutory Director of Social Services was required to produce the report, summarising their view on their local authority’s social care functions, and priorities for improvement, as legislated in the Social Services and Wellbeing (Wales) Act 2014 and the Regulations and Inspections Act (Wales) 2015.

            The purpose of the Social Services Annual Report was to set out a self-evaluation with priorities for improvement.  The report would form an integral part of Care Inspectorate Wales’ (CIW) performance evaluation of Social Services.  The evaluation also informed the Wales Audit Office’s assessment of the Council as part of their annual improvement report.

            The Chief Officer (Social Services) explained that the style of the report followed that of previous reports and would be produced in an electronic friendly style by Double Click.  The report would also be translated and be made available in a bi-lingual format on the Council’s website following approval.

            The annual report outlined the improvement priorities identified for 2020/22 and they were detailed in the report, including the extension of Marleyfield and the implementation of the ‘Mockingbird Model’ of Fostering.

As Chair of Social and Health Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee, Councillor McGuill asked a number of question which had been responded to directly via email, as detailed below:

Q - How many micro care units are up and operating caring for how many clients (lot of money going into this and perfect timing with lockdown to grow these businesses)

A - As described within the report this is a Pilot with funding coming WG Rural Communities and Economic Challenge grants, significant amounts of work had been undertaken pre Coronavirus, and we were at the point of having a number of Micro care interested and ready to go.  However this has halted due to the C19 regulations PHW guidance. We continue to develop and advertise the work we are doing and will be ready move forward with at least two micro cares once lock restriction are eased.

Q - Technology usage has expanded massively across all ages and abilities what are we doing to capture this and again grow this form of contact with people? Training is one field but so many others now is the time to “go for it”.

A - As part of the regional transformational projects, which Flintshire leads on, we have launched the get checked out website for people with a learning disability, this is a live website and it will evolve as people begin to use this, we will know how many hits we’ve had on this.  There is excellent use of technology in children’s service and this has proved to be a really popular medium during lock down, staff are reporting the young people are very engaged so good learning for the future use of tech in this area.  Alongside this our training team are using technology including Zoom and other online training resources to ensure staff are well trained and supported.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 177