Issue - meetings

This paper provides a briefing on the Council’s market position statement for adult social care.

The Commissioning Manager for Adult Social Care introduced this report to the Select Committee. He explained that a market position statement, or MPS, is a strategic document that sets commissioners’ long term priorities for social care, and how it will work with providers and partners to develop services in the future to meet the community’s evolving needs.

He added that the Council has duties under the Care Act (2014) to help shape and oversee the social care market and ensure that its residents can access good quality, sustainable care and support.

He stated that Council’s MPS focusses on specific commissioning intentions for older adults in the following service areas:

·  Accommodation based services (p. 43): care homes, dementia, extra care & sheltered housing.

·  Services at home (p.48): homecare, integrated reablement, live-in care.

·  Other community services (p. 53): direct payments, carers and community equipment / assistive technology.

He explained that further chapters for other service areas will be published over the coming year; including commissioning intentions for mental health, working age adults and substance misuse. Separate to the MPS discussed in this paper, the learning disabilities commissioning team has started consultation with the provider market on an integrated health and social care learning disabilities MPS.

He informed them that the current draft was published on 1st March and the consultation period remains open until 6th May. He added that the commissioning intentions at this stage will be refined depending on the feedback and suggestions received from the market during this time.

He said that providers, developers and key stakeholders have been invited to two consultation events on April 20th (Somerdale Pavilion, Keynsham) and 2nd May (Guildhall, Bath).

The Chair asked if the final version of the MPS would come back before the Select Committee.

The Director for Integrated Health & Care Commissioning replied that the MPS should remain a live document and that the Select Committee can be informed when other chapters become live.

Councillor Dine Romero commented that she worried about the reliance on volunteers within this work area and asked if any current data was able to be used rather than relying on the census of 2011.

The Director for Integrated Health & Care Commissioning replied that the Council commissions the Carers’ Centre and has also sourced data from a number of outlets. She added that the difficulty is that not all people that provide care indicate that they do so and that it was likely that figures both nationally and locally were underestimated.

Councillor Eleanor Jackson commented that it was good to have this information available and proposed that the Development Management Committee receiving a briefing on the matter at some point. She added that comments by developers that care provision was ‘not feasible’ should be challenged robustly.

She stated that reference to the Homecare studies carried out by previous Panels would have been welcomed, but appreciated the evidence provided for long term planning.

The Commissioning Manager for Adult Social Care replied that the process has been useful for officers and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 82