Good Practice

The Scrutiny Panel reviewed the fostering service in 2001 and councillors were actively involved in the process throughout. The review found that the quality of the provision was good with particular reference to stability of placements of children looked after.

The process was robust - taking evidence from officers, councillors, foster carers, young people who have left care and representatives of minority ethnic communities.

A number of recommendations were made which have since been implemented to improve the fostering service:

• improved support for foster carers
  
• increasing the number and diversity of carers
  
• better support for young people in the education system
  
• a wider and more substantial role for the Parenting Panel
  
• utilising the children's rights officer to involve young people in the evaluation of the quality of the foster service
  
• support for care leavers - including housing

Good Practice

The practice development centre was set up in 1996 for refresher Approved Social Worker training and this is still core activity but they also provide other training and development opportunities (see below). Some of these initiatives also help to draw in other funding, such as £37,000 from the Learning and Skills Council.

The aims are:

• To provide qualification training for staff in the mental health service
  
• To develop understanding of mental health issues in a wide range of staff groups and across agencies in order to generate and sustain broad-based support to people with mental health needs in the community
  
• To empower service users by developing their knowledge of mental health issues and by developing their skills and confidence
  
• To promote positive understanding of mental health in the community, for example through press stories
  

Benefits

• The community mental health course was piloted in 2002 with a 78 per cent pass rate
  
• Mental health awareness training has been provided for primary health care staff, service users, and housing services support staff and others
  
• Mental health input is provided for new initiatives such as Direct Payments
  
• User involvement is strong. Service users are trainers and attend the courses as participants
  

Good Practice

Wigan has introduced a range of initiatives which have increased their overall capacity for training and development by working closely with partners on particular initiatives to deliver core programmes. Training and development have been offered to independent sector providers

A Joint Training Partnership - exists across the statutory, private and voluntary sector in order to build a shared approach to workforce competence and create opportunities for accessing grant funding from a wider variety of sources. For example, last year 191 candidates were assisted to register for National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs), 106 of these were from the private and voluntary sector. 50 per cent of training grants will be spent on training and development for staff working for private and voluntary agencies in 2003/4.

Learning centres - there are three learning centres that enable both employees and service users to continuously improve their knowledge. Services provided include the loan of books and journals, audio visual training packs, computer based learning including CD ROM packages and online learning, access to Learn Direct courses, word processing facilities and research access to the internet.

Social Care Information and Learning Services - this is a web-based learning initiative comprising individual learning sessions, group learning sessions, and a 'Newsdesk' that covers new legislative and best practice information.

Skills for Life - a joint venture between Social Services, Learn Direct, and Wigan and Leigh College, particularly targeted to enable staff to improve their reading, writing and numeracy skills.

The How:

• Staff involved throughout
  
• A diagonal slice group from across the service led the development and oversees the process
  
• Proposals widely consulted upon
  
• Standards prioritised and kept simple
  
• Reports are two sides of A4 and are produced within ten days of the data being collected
  
• Started with large services then brought in the others
  
• In place fast
  
• Started in late September 2002, up and running by January 2003
  
• Used to measure and improve service
  
• Standards are reported and discussed at all levels
  

The What:

25 standards covering:

• Customers: - assessments, care plans and reviews
  
• Operations: - recording standards, copies of care plans to users
  
• Resources: - outcome-focused care plans, value for money
  
• People: - supervision, appraisal, workload
  

Good Practice

'Safe in the Knowledge' is an electronic database that allows criteria and standards for domiciliary care and supported living services to be stored and compared to measure compliance. It includes essential and desirable criteria, and incorporates user views, staff comments and complaints analysis. Data is aggregated year on year to allow progress and compliance with requirements to be analysed with recommendations for further improvement. An annual report is produced.

Good Practice

Worcestershire have developed three initiatives aimed at involving service users in training and development of staff:

• The Worcestershire Association of Service Users is developing a project with the University College of Worcester to include a module on user involvement in their Health and Social Welfare degree. They will train users to help deliver this. There is a similar project with the North East College, Worcester
  
• A Certificate in Community Mental Health programme has been developed in partnership with Birmingham University. Users and Carers can also access this. Users of mental health services have also been involved in training on care co-ordination and risk assessment
  
• 'Total Respect' training is being led by young people who are looked after

Good Practice

People with learning disabilities take part in this video which uses a number of case study examples to track what happens when a service user complains. Scenarios include staff taking money from a service user and staff arriving late to meet a service user.

Good Practice

The Audit Commission has inspected the implementation of new arrangements for the scrutiny of local health services in South Tyneside Council using its six steps to developing the health scrutiny function in 'A healthy outlook - local authorities overview and scrutiny of health'

The Audit Commission drew the following conclusions about South Tyneside:

• The Council has responded with enthusiasm to the new powers of health scrutiny, and had embedded health scrutiny into its overall scrutiny arrangements
  
• It has recognized the importance of involving outside representatives in the scrutiny process, and has invited them on committees as advisers and as participants in the innovative Scrutiny Commission
  
• The links which are being made between health scrutiny and the community plan process demonstrate the Council's community leadership role and commitment to partnership working
  
• There has been good involvement of NHS bodies in the development of health scrutiny to date, and close working with the PCT through the Council's social care and health directorate
  
• The relationship has been assisted by the joint appointment of the post of Director of Public Health who is responsible to the Executive Director for Social Care and Health
  The Commission made a number of recommendations on how to build upon a promising start.
  Read More

Context

Wokingham became a 'unitary' authority in April, 1998 after the reorganisation of the former Berkshire County Council. It covers a relatively small geographic area of 44,211 acres and has three main population centres, the town of Wokingham and the suburbs of Woodley and Earley which border the major population centre of Reading. The current population is approximately 146,000 with a relatively young age profile. 3.24% of the population is made up of people from the black and ethnic minority communities with 6.8% of young people of school age from those communities, although this is higher in the wards bordering Reading.

Good Practice

A decision was made to include service user representatives on the Learning Disability Partnership Board. To enable this to happen, the Board recognised that particular arrangements needed to be put in place to enable users to actively participate, which included reviewing the working procedures of the Board.
A planning conference was set up with a series of workshops to deal with the various topics being considered by the Board, with breaks to allow explanations and support to service users using trained advocacy staff. Following the conference workshops, Core Groups were formed to progress the specific areas of work, each with service user representation.

Benefits

Users were empowered to participate in the strategic development of their service, which included the modernisation programme for day services (the 'WAVE' project), to increase educational and work opportunities, and the implementation of person-centred planning.

Good Practice

Stockport has developed a corporate risk management policy and strategy supported by a risk management register as identified in the report below:

Click Here for Stockport Risk Register Report

Good Practice

Devon County Council social services has a comprehensive system of risk assessment in its in-house services to ensure that staff and service users experience a risk free environment. The standards are also built into contracts with the independent sector providers. The summary report enables the council to build an overall picture of risk through a series of checklists. The summary sheet is backed up by specific records for each area of service and unit of service delivery.
Click Here for the summary report

Benefits

It provides a systematic approach to risk assessment and management within all services provided by Devon's social services department, and provides management with an oversight of key issues which may need a more strategic solution

Good Practice

Each year the Heads of Service agree departmental targets by drawing together the key departmental targets and the Joint Review action plan. These are then disaggregated to each District Manager. Local ownership and accountability is ensured through a Service Target Contract, which is agreed and formally signed off by both the Head of Service and District Manager at the start of the year. The District Managers in turn disaggregate these to their team managers. Plans are in place eventually to devolve these targets to each practitioner so that they form part of their own individual performance plans.

Performance against each target is presented month by month on a departmental basis but is also broken down to each locality. Each locality is therefore told its own performance and awarded Performance Assessment Framework (PAF) scores accordingly.

The summary sheets present a graph with a trend line. A separate box highlights those localities which appear to be doing well and those where investigation is needed.

To view larger version of the image click here

Good Practice

Leicestershire has made use of the fact that the PAF indicators can be grouped together into the Department of Health's five domains of performance. These are: 'national priorities and strategic objectives', 'cost and efficiency', 'service delivery and outcomes', 'quality' and 'fair access'.

In order to get a measure of its performance in each of these domains, the County assigns a score for the performance against each indicator (Band 1 = 1, Band 2 = 2, etc). The total score for each domain is then converted into the percentage of the maximum score obtainable for that domain. These percentages are plotted onto pentagon shaped diagrams - one for adults' services, one for children's services, and one for Leicestershire's performance as a whole. The aim is to get a balanced profile across all the domains; the closer the shape matches the pentagon, the better the performance