Welcome to the 2017/18 annual report for Social Care in Conwy. This year we have looked at how we can illustrate how the services we deliver focus on the experiences of service users and indeed the 6 key quality standards described in the Social Services and Wellbeing Act 2014. We have worked hard to ensure that we listen and have undertaken the second citizen survey of people who use our services this again year. Over 2000 questionnaires were sent out and a good number of responses received allowed us to really consider the rich source of feedback to further develop or indeed to ‘stay on track’.
We have maintained good performance in older people’s services, information, advice and assistance and children’s services. We heard from people that better linking up with other partners such as health makes a difference and we are delighted to further develop our community resource teams in the coming year.
We have majored on early help and support; working with our third sector partners we now have a very well established blend of community wellbeing services. They range from supporting children and their families to working to promote good mental health across all ages, especially those affected by any stage of dementia.
Safeguarding remains a service and corporate priority, particularly adult safeguarding, where we have needed to invest in support and training for our staff to influence a better profile of indicators where we can show a difference. We have some excellent work that we are showcasing nationally in the field of Child Sexual Exploitation and it really demonstrates the excellent innovation coming from frontline practitioners.
The Social Services and Well-being Act has encouraged a shift in thinking towards encouraging people to think about what matters to them and working together to co-produce support. We have some excellent feedback on page 21 of the report that really gives a flavour of the direction of travel in this area, and I am very humbled by the examples.
We have begun to shape services for children and families across a whole spectrum of services and have benefited greatly from closer synergy between the early help teams such as Flying Start and Team around the Family and our services to children in need of care and support.
Latterly the report shares some great areas where we developed innovative accommodation options for some of our service users including young people’s positive pathways and our ever-successful extra care schemes, of which we want to develop more.
We have recently launched our commissioning strategy which we are very proud of and sets the direction for our social care services in Conwy amongst a time of ongoing change in legislation and policy. We will report back each year on our ambitions with the strategy to show our continuous commitment to delivering quality services. Finally a note of thanks to all the people who use our services who took the time to give feedback and indeed to our greatest asset – our wonderful staff team.
Jenny Williams
Strategic Director of Social Care & Education Services
Conwy County Borough Council