(i)

the Adult Health and Social Care team meet with the CQC on a quarterly basis with the last meeting occurring in October 2009;

(ii)

these meetings had culminated in the CQC report, which contained a number of recommendations for Plymouth City Council to carry out improvements to the Adult Health and Social Care services;

(iii)

the report demonstrated that Plymouth had made significant improvements and that they were now regarded as one of the better Adult Social Care Departments in the South West;

(iv)

as a result of the recommendations provided by the CQC, an action plan had been drawn up, explaining the actions that were currently taking place or would be soon commencing to further improve the service. The action plan would be submitted to the CQC on 3 March 2010.

(v)

having been identified as an Authority that was performing well, Plymouth City Council would be able to self declare on the first six outcomes on the next assessment. However, outcome seven ‘maintaining personal dignity and respect’ would still need to be completed in full and submitted in May to the CQC;

(vi)

although Adult Health and Social Care had received an increase of £1.8 million to its budget for 2010/2011, there was a requirement for an additional £4.2 million to deliver the planned programme of services which would be challenging;

(vii)

the action plan submitted today was not as comprehensive as the evidence to  be provided to CQC in May as this would include a range of numerical data;

(viii)

in terms of commissioning, the Adult Health and Social Care team had developed significantly and were actively engaging with partner agencies and third sector organisations to improve their services. Some frontline teams were now co-located, provider forums had been created, newsletters were provided and there had been regular engagement and consultation processes;

(ix)

at the end of March 2010 the service would have supported approximately 9,500 service users of which approximately 1,600 would have had personal budgets or a direct payment.  Personal budgets empower service users by offering them a choice on what care they receive and by whom it is provided;

(x)

a project officer had been appointed within the Learning Disability Service to establish a database of how many people with learning disabilities were currently employed in the city, to champion Learning Disability employment more generally and also describe the range of support in place to support Learning Disability service users to gain employment, voluntary and paid;

(xi)

the responsibility  for  the co-ordination of sheltered housing has transferred from Plymouth Community Homes to PCC Housing. However there are some concerns that older people may not be able to manage the bidding process without support and that there is not enough resource built into the system to carry out assessments to determine both extra care and sheltered housing.

(1)

an update on the joint plan/work stream created to review and improve intermediate care would be provided to a future meeting of the panel in approximately six months;

(2)

a briefing paper on community based services through the small grants process would be circulated to panel members by the Head of Modernisation;

(3)

the results of the Adult Social Care User Satisfaction Survey be emailed to panel members on completion;

(4)

once established, details of the Quality Checkers Service be brought to a future meeting of the panel;

(5)

an update be provided on the All Our Futures strategy at a future meeting;

(6)

in response to (xi) above a request be sent to PCC housing to submit a briefing paper to a future meeting of the panel in response to the following –

·        

how are people being helped to access the choice based lettings system in terms of sheltered or supported housing;

·        

what resources do PCC housing have in place to support older people with the bidding process;

·        

what information or training has been provided to Social Workers to enable clients to access housing more suitable to their needs via the new choice based lettings system. How has this new system been communicated across Adult Health and Social Care;

(7)

the Democratic Support Officer be requested to organise a visit to the Learning Disability Extra Care Scheme.