Councillors and committees

Issue - meetings

URGENT CARE IN SURREY HEARTLANDS

Meeting: 04/12/2019 - Adults and Health Select Committee (Item 21)

21 CABINET MEMBER UPDATE pdf icon PDF 320 KB

Purpose of the report: To share details of the Cabinet Member’s priority areas of work, including any strategy and policy developments, and provide an overview of the budget position and performance of services within the portfolio.

Minutes:

Witnesses:

Sinead Mooney, Cabinet Member for Adults and Public Health

Liz Uliasz, Deputy Director, Adult Social Care

Kate Scribbins, Chief Executive, Healthwatch Surrey

Nick Markwick, Co-Chair, Surrey Coalition of Disabled People

 

Key points raised during the discussion:

 

  1. The Cabinet Member updated the Select Committee with regard to the Surrey Public Health Peer Challenge, mentioned in item 15 of the report. At the Peer Challenge meeting in November 2019, agreed-on recommendations included:
    1. To review and simplify the governance of the system;
    2. To ensure that Surrey County Council was clear about the expectations of the Public Health team;
    3. To ensure that the Public Health team accepted change and was clear about how they were delivering against the priorities set out for them.

The action plan would detail how these recommendations would be implemented, and the recommendations would be closely monitored.

  1. The Chairman pointed out that care commitments were over budget and queried why there had been an overspend and what was being done to balance the budget. The Cabinet Member explained that mitigation measures were in place to ensure the budget was balanced, including a staffing underspend of £1.4 million, partly because of difficulties around recruitment; the level of inflation; managing providers’ expectations; an underspend of around £1.5 million on ASC internal transformation; and £1.8 million of funding carried forward from the 18/19 budget. Underspends would be offset against an increase in spending on care packages.
  2. A Member expressed concern about managing providers’ expectations, as many care providers were already struggling financially. The Cabinet Member replied that a report would be coming forward with details of an uplift in funding for the upcoming year. The importance of working closely with providers was emphasised, as were improvements in communications in the past year. The Deputy Director of Adult Social Care added that the commissioning function had been strengthened and restructured, and that providers’ requests for increases in spending were dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
  3. A Member asked for clarification on why there had been an underspend on transformation, despite the relatively high level of transformation that had been happening. The Deputy Director for ASC responded that the underspend was partly due to incomplete recruitment.
  4. A Member queried whether the Council was working with district and borough councils to ensure that there were homes available countywide for people who needed care, with no neglected areas, and whether existing homes were being adapted or new facilities built. Cabinet had recently signed off three sites for the development of homes, with a focus on residents within those catchment areas. In addition, there were many private developments going through the planning process. The Council worked with districts and boroughs to develop residents’ own homes so that residents could live independently there.
  5. The Select Committee queried stock levels of the flu jab. The Cabinet Member stated these had increased and would be available until February 2020.
  6. The Co-Chair of the Surrey Coalition of Disabled People questioned the efficacy of direct payments, due to frequent delays, and asked  ...  view the full minutes text for item 21