Nottingham City Council has welcomed the opportunity to be involved in a pilot of a new approach to the assessment of how local authorities undertake delivery of their adult social care duties under the Care Act 2014.
The CQC is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in Englandwhich monitors, inspects and regulates services.
For each of the five local authorities taking part in the pilot, the CQC has provided a report, indicative scores for key areas, and an overall rating – these are indicative not formal ratings. All learning will be incorporated into the formal assessment process for all local authorities with responsibility for adult social care which is expected to start later this year.
Nottingham’s report, published today along with reports for the other pilot councils – Birmingham, Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire and Suffolk – gives an indicative rating of ‘Requires Improvement’. The report highlights the improvement plans that Nottingham already has in place and reflects progress and changes already achieved.
The report sets out key strengths in the council’s adult social care provision, areas for development and next steps.
Key strengths identified include:
- Passionate and committed staff providing the best care and support possible.
- Work underway to reduce waiting lists for assessment and reviews.
- Positive feedback about culture and leadership with senior staff reported to be accessible and visible.
- Areas such as the Supported Living Team, reablement and hospital discharge working well in providing effective support to people.
- Prevention was a key focus with good examples in practice; through day services in promoting independence, use of some assistive technology and development of staff practice in relation to wellbeing, when working with people.
- A transformation of the commissioning service was underway.
Areas for development include:
- Mixed feedback from some teams around caseloads, systems and pathways between teams, and how teams work with partners
- Some gaps identified in the provision of accessible information for people
- Difficulties in relation to people finding suitable accommodation, linked to the broader challenges in housing capacity in Nottingham
- A need for further co-ordinated work to more effectively support people from different cultural and diverse backgrounds.
- Areas such as co-production were identified by the local authority as needing to improve along with better collection and use of data.
- Working with partners such as health on an individual level was positive however more structural relationships could be developed to improve this.
- Use of advocacy services could be improved, especially support for carers.
Under next steps, the report says that senior staff showed a good awareness in relation to the areas which required improvement and that there was evidence of progress made and further plans of how this would be achieved, but with more work to do.
Cllr Linda Woodings, the council’s Portfolio Holder for Adult Social Care and Health, said: “The council is committed to a process of learning and continual improvement to help us to understand and to providing effective social care that deliver good value for our residents, so we welcomed the chance to take part in the CQC pilot as it provided the opportunity for the plans we already have in place to be independently assessed.
“We’re pleased that the CQC has recognised key areas where the council are working well to support local people and we will use the areas identified for development to inform our ongoing improvement work.”
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