Agenda and minutes

To receive any declarations of interest.

There were no declarations of interest received at this point in the meeting.

The minutes of the Adult Social Care and Services Scrutiny Panel meeting held on 5 January 2022 were submitted and approved as a correct record.

The Director of Adult Social Care and Health Integration will provide the panel with a verbal update regarding the integration of health and social care.

The Director of Adult Social Care and Health Integration provided Members with an update regarding the integration of Health and Social Care; the following points were made:

• Sam Allen had recently taken up the post of Chief Executive of the Integrated Care Board (ICB) for the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care System (ICS).  Meetings between the Chief Executive and Local Authority Directors would be taking place over the coming weeks.
• The NHS was amending the way it carried out its internal governance; the intention was for the ICS to be implemented in April 2022, but had been delayed to July 2022.  At present, discussion was taking place with Chief Executives across the region in relation to the operating model for the ICS.  The ICS was concerned with the structure of the NHS, though there was a role for Local Authorities to have representation on the associated Board.  Beneath that, a further structure would be established to consider matters at local level.  The operating model for the ICB was currently under discussion; Tees Valley Chief Executives would next be meeting on 16 March 2022 to feed their collective opinions regarding this back to the NHS.
• It was felt that the current working relationship that the Local Authority had with the NHS / Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) was as strong as it had ever been.  It was envisaged that the majority of the current Directors and representatives of the CCG would continue to liaise with the Local Authority once the ICS had formally been established, as there was a requirement of the NHS to retain local structures and linkages.
• Due to Middlesbrough’s health demographics, it was felt that the ICS provided opportunity for longer term preventative work to be looked at.

During the discussion that followed, Members asked a number of queries of the Director.  In response, the following information was provided:

• A Member commented that they felt reassured by the information provided, particularly as they had previously held concerns around the alteration of the local structure in relation to the size of the area that the new ICS would cover.  In response, the Director indicated that there would be structural changes.  The ICB, which was a Board of the NHS, covered the large geographical area; to ensure that local areas could ‘feed in’, there would be an Integrated Care Partnership (ICP), which was currently being discussed by the Chief Executives.  The ICP would bring together local statutory and voluntary partners to arrive at collective agreement around what was appropriate for the respective local area.  It was explained that the ICS guidance had been produced with an expectation that there would be one ICP for the whole geographical area.  However, as the largest ICS in England, this would not have been practical and therefore, four ICPs were currently being created (Middlesbrough would belong to the Tees ICP, which was likely to involve the five Local Authorities).  It was felt that this approach would grant opportunity for Middlesbrough to act as  ...  view the full minutes text for item 21/46

Officers will be in attendance to provide the scrutiny panel with a general overview and introduction to the topic, which will include:

·        details of the impact that Covid-19 has had on the operation of VCS organisations and the ways in which services are delivered;

·        details of the types of support that VCS organisations have provided to health and wellbeing services;

·        details of the financial support provided to VCS organisations during the pandemic; and

·        opportunities for future working.

The Director of Adult Social Care and Health Integration and the Advanced Public Health Practitioner were in attendance at the meeting to provide an introduction to this new topic.  A written report had been submitted in advance of the meeting.

By way of background and context, the Director made the following points:

·        Within Adult Social Care, there were a number of different themes of service delivery / operational activity, which consisted of in-house service provision and independent (commissioned) service provision.  Separate from those was the support provided by the VCS.  Some of the services within the VCS were commissioned, others were pre-existing VCS organisations that acted entirely independently from the Council in the broader community.  In terms of the latter, it was highlighted that despite not being directly commissioned, those organisations provided a critical contribution to the resilience of the Council’s services because they supported the same communities that the Council sought to support.

·        Traditionally the Council had linked into the VCS through Middlesbrough Voluntary Development Agency (MVDA), but also in the acknowledgment that there were lots of other aspects of the VCS that operated outside of MVDA, which although challenging to engage with was important to do so.  It was felt that improvements could be gained around this engagement work both in respect of Adult Social Care and the Local Authority as a whole.

·        Reflecting upon the impact of the pandemic, it was felt that in some respects there had been a hiatus for a couple of years in terms of development work because everyone had been focused on operational delivery.  It had impacted service plans and had caused problems, but had also created opportunities.  Moving out of the acute phase and into the recovery phase, now was the time to reassess, take stock and consider how activities would be carried out in a post-pandemic world.

·        During the pandemic, Public Health had worked exceptionally well with the VCS.  The submitted report reviewed the work undertaken by Public Health primarily during the pandemic, and where that work now left the authority in relation to the VCS.

The Advanced Public Health Practitioner provided the following information to the panel:

·        The Advanced Public Health Practitioner had been responsible for creating the Council’s ‘Covid Champions Network’, which was initially formed through government grant funding.

·        The role of the VCS was essential in supporting those accessing health and wellbeing services (and preventing poor health), as well as social care services.  Consideration was given to the high profile of some VCS organisations and the comparatively low profile of others; it was important that the value of all of those was recognised.

·        Public Health’s engagement work with the VCS had initially commenced via the government grants programme.  It had been recognised that, as Covid hit, the Council needed to support those VCS organisations that were going to be significantly affected.  It was explained that formal organisations were suddenly unable to support vulnerable clients in their usual ways (e.g. following the removal of face-to-face contact), and therefore  ...  view the full minutes text for item 21/47

The Chair will provide a verbal update on matters considered at the meetings of the Overview and Scrutiny Board held on 18 January 2022 and 22 February 2022.

The Chair provided a verbal update on the matters that were considered at the Overview and Scrutiny Board (OSB) meetings on 18 January 2022 and 22 February 2022.

A Member queried whether Executive Members had attended the two OSB meetings to provide updates.  The Chair advised that the respective Executive Member had attended the 22 February 2022 meeting, but attendance at the 18 January 2022 meeting would need to be confirmed.  This would be followed-up directly with the Member raising the enquiry.

AGREED that the Chair would review the Executive Members’ attendance at the 18 January 2022 OSB meeting and confirm the position with the Member raising the enquiry.

The next meeting of the Adult Social Care and Services Scrutiny Panel had been scheduled for 30 March 2022, which would be the last scheduled meeting of the 2021/2022 Municipal Year. 

The panel would continue with ‘The Role of the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) in Supporting Adult Social Care (with a focus on Covid-19 recovery)’ review by considering terms of reference and inviting representatives from the VCS to provide information.

NOTED