2015-16 3 - Conwy Social Services Annual Report

Safeguarding Unit role within the development of the Corporate Safeguarding Policy

Over the last twelve months, the Safeguarding Unit have continued to take a lead role in the implementation of the Corporate Safeguarding Policy. The Safeguarding Unit have delivered the Basic Safeguarding Awareness training to staff across the Council, including all Members. In addition the Safeguarding Unit will be delivering further Basic Safeguarding Awareness training over the next twelve months.

In Conwy, all Designated Leads for Safeguarding in each council department will have also attended Safeguarding training on the SSWB act. This training will support the Designated Leads in understanding the requirements around duty to report.

The Safeguarding Unit have also assisted with CCBC licensing department in delivering mandatory Child Sexual Exploitation training to taxi drivers across Conwy.

The Unit have also assisted colleagues in Education around the implementation of the Keeping Learners Safe Guidance requirements.

Quality Assurance of Child Protection Conferences and Looked After Children Reviews

As part of the Quality Assurance Framework in the Safeguarding Unit, after each Child Protection Conference and Looked after Child Review meeting, the Chairperson completes an online audit tool.

For the Child Protection Conference, the audit tool focuses on the following practice areas:

Engagement with the Child and Family prior to conference
Quality of Reports presented
Overall Quality of Child Protection Work

For the LAC Review Meeting, the online audit tool focuses on the following practice areas:

Engagement with the Child and Family prior to the review meeting
Quality of Reports presented at the Review meeting
Attendance at the Review meeting
Was the Care Plan being progressed and meeting the child’s needs

A highlight report is completed by the Safeguarding Unit, the report is presented to the Head of Service, Service Managers meeting and at the Section/ Team Managers meeting.

The highlight report identified areas of good practice and areas for improvement.

In relation to Child Protection, the department has been able to identify the following good practice areas

The general quality of social worker reports for conference was good.
The quality of the reports from Health Authority for conference are consistently of a good quality with detailed content.
Engagement with Children and Young People at case conference was improving

The timeliness of conference reports being shared with the Safeguarding Unit was identified as an area for improvement.

In relation to the LAC review process, the audits have identified the following good practice areas:

There continues to be evidence of good levels of engagement with the Child/ Young Person at the Review Meeting. Views are recorded at the meeting.
Improvement in relation to timeliness around permanency planning

The audit reports have identified areas of improvement to be made in relation to attendance of partner agencies at LAC reviews. The Safeguarding Unit have met with the respective Senior Managers in these agencies to look at ways of improving attendance.

The highlight reports also provided quantitative data and the number of cases where the Escalation Policy has had to be followed.

KickStart

The Vulnerable People’s service has worked in partnership with Castell Care and Wales and West Housing Association to plan and develop a unique model of care to meet the needs of vulnerable young adults leaving care or who are living chaotic lives in the community. This continues with the focus of ‘recovery’ and housing plays a key role in supporting and encouraging people to develop the skills necessary to live independently in their community. This means that people can move away from residential care and learn how to manage everyday activities that most people take for granted, such as personal care and household tasks, managing their money and building links with others and participating in their communities.

The Project will provide one shared living house for four young people and seven individual flats for other vulnerable people. The flats will be part of a newly built housing estate in Abergele. Individuals will receive tailored support from Castell Care in order to develop their independent living skills and to help them maintain their tenancies. This Project gives those young people the opportunity to move out of foster and residential care to start their development journey which will ultimately lead to successful independent living.

The Supporting People Programme Grant, which is a fund to deliver accommodation related support services to help people to achieve or sustain independent living in their community, has been used by the service to initiate this exciting development. We have been working very closely with the Housing Association to identify which of our service users would benefit the most from this scheme so that the moves goes smoothly once the flats are ready in the summer.

Kickstart is not about doing things for people. It’s about helping people to understand that things can be different. It is about supporting people to find their way, understand that they can have goals and that they can be achieved. Kickstart will help people realise they do have a future, that it can be different from today and it will enable them to find their own way while accompanying them on their journey. The service will be there for them when they need to talk and staff will listen to what they have to say with a strong focus on helping them build or rebuild their life to achieve what they want. Most of all it’s about not giving up on people or allowing them to give up on themselves.

Recovery Compass

Voluntary Organisations, also known as the ‘Third Sector’, have always had a close relationship with Social Services and we contract with particular groups to deliver certain aspects of support to our service users. Often, people prefer to engage with voluntary groups for ongoing support rather than remain in public sector services and we wanted to provide an onward service that enhanced and complemented the work of our Community Mental Health Teams.

In 2014 we began to review our contracts for people with mental health issues and support for carers of adults with mental health issues, as they were due to end in March 2016. It is important that we make sure that all our services are fit for purpose and offer the most effective and valuable support to our service users. Research tells us that the best way to help people manage their mental health problems better and gain control over their lives is an approach called ‘recovery’. This does not mean recovery in the same way as someone fully recovers from a physical illness but does offer hope and ‘the belief that it is possible for someone to regain a meaningful life, despite serious mental illness.’ [1]

With this in mind, we began to design a new service that would be delivered by the third sector for ongoing support to those people with mental health issues. To help us with our ideas we involved our Participation Team who spoke to people currently receiving services to find out what has been the most beneficial and made the biggest difference to their lives. The end result is a new service called ‘Recovery Compass’, which will be delivered by Aberconwy Mind from April 2016. Everyone who goes on the ‘Recovery Compass’ will receive a ‘Wellness Recovery Action Plan’ or WRAP, which is the individual’s plan entirely tailored to their needs and ambitions for the future. The eight key points on the compass are: Participation, Peer Support, Employability, Coaching, Social Interaction, Social Therapies, Learning and Achieving, Information and Advice.

For some service users their experience of the ‘recovery compass’ will be having some information and advice about their condition and the best ways to manage it or signposting to other groups more suited to them. For others it will be joining in activities with others that help their physical and mental wellbeing or being part of a peer group that provides support to others in a similar situation. Some individuals will utilise all the services as part of the compass, which will offer opportunities to learn new skills that can lead on to work experience and employment. Whichever aspects of the Recovery Compass are important to the service user, the main aim is to go beyond managing symptoms but to allow people to increase or maintain their own wellbeing, including them in their communities and giving opportunities to contribute and participate in society.

[1] https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk

Development of the Vulnerable People Team

As a newly established service within Social Care, the Vulnerable People team was designed to help the most vulnerable in our society to regain or maintain their independence and wellbeing and making sure that a greater number of people with needs are supported in a range of ways. Those people with complex, challenging and chaotic lives are often more vulnerable than those who fit into the traditional services and as a consequence of limited support they often look inappropriately to the emergency services such as Police or Fire service or the Ambulance service for their help. The team itself has minimum access to a care budget and therefore the members of the team are reliant on themselves as a social work and OT resource to address the needs of the clients. They are particularly creative and make strong links with third sector organisations to enable their clients to access the universal services available in the community.

Although this is a new and developing service a number of case studies have been recorded demonstrating the benefits and positive impacts the team are having:

A young man was referred to the service from his family as he was using cannabis and getting in trouble with the police, there were lots of issues at home with aggression towards his family. The worker did some motivational interviewing and worked with him to develop an outcome focussed assessment and care plan. As a result of this work the young man’s Mum wrote a letter of thanks to the team saying the approach has had 100% positive affect on her son and she has been very grateful for the intervention which has meant that her son can remain at home with family.
Another young man was in trouble with the police and potentially facing a jail term. The team began working with him and at his court case the barrister stated that it was directly the interventions put in place by the Vulnerable People team that meant that this young man avoided a prison sentence.

The team are also developing processes and mechanisms to enhance the service:

The Vulnerable People’s team have piloted the new integrated assessment process [1] in preparation for the implementation of the Social Care and Well Being Act. This gave practitioners the opportunity to embed the principles of person centred outcome focussed assessment and care for vulnerable young people.
The team manager has also introduced a new robust risk assessment to ensure that staff consider their own health and safety when working with clients who pose a risk to themselves and others.
As the team has developed and listened to the needs of service users they also felt that the introduction of a wellness recovery action plan (WRAP) would be of benefit. Through working in partnership with the PARIS team [2] we have made it easier for staff to create a smooth transfer for Care Leavers, to an Adult social worker, with their individual plan in place.

[1] As mentioned on page 8.

[2] The PARIS system is used to store records and information about the people who use the services provided by Conwy’s social services department.

TRAC

Through our partnership with the North Wales Ambition Board and the five other local authorities within our Region, a new programme aimed at young people has been developed called TRAC.

Led by Denbighshire County Council and in partnership with all other North Wales local authorities and the Colleges, the aim will be to supporting young people aged 11-24 disengaging with education, and at risk of becoming NEET – Not in Education, Employment or Training. The TRAC project will run for three to five years has secured money from European Structural Funds (ESF).

TRAC will improve attainment and will support the development of an appropriately skilled, agile and resilient workforce. The project is consistent with the six aspects of the Youth Engagement and Progression Framework. The project will reach out to young people with the aim of raising individual attainment and enhancing the quality of the workforce of the future.

The project will include the following range of interventions at aged 11-24:

Provision of an Enhanced Alternative Curriculum – Provision of targeted vocational courses and extended work placements for young people identified as being at risk of becoming NEET
Enhanced Support Package – Wider Health and Wellbeing support for young people at risk of becoming NEET
Supporting Transition –Targeted focus on key transition stages. Age 11 [primary/ secondary transition], Age 14 [key stage 3 to 4 transition], Age 16 [transition to 6th form, further education, employment or training], Age 18/19 [transition to higher education, further education, employment or training]
Delivery – Regionally procured framework of quality assured bilingual providers, based on the identified needs of the Young Person.
Early identification of those at risk of disengagement from Year 7 in order to manage the transition to secondary education. Development of regional data to ensure accurate monitoring and tracking of participants, to evaluate the impact of support being provided to young people.

16-24 Further Education Provision will include:

Identification and Brokerage Support
Working in conjunction with EPC’s, implementing appropriate brokerage support for those participants; this will include supporting participants to develop a personal development plan for upskilling for a career, supporting participants to
Their first job opportunity, helping participants access the appropriate training.

Once live, this project will fall within our Prevention Section that is an integral part of our overall Community Wellbeing Service and wider Social Services and Education departments.

Improved governance and compliance within grant funded programmes

The Community and Wellbeing Service acts as the provider of services to Welsh Government and European funded projects with the aim of Tackling Poverty.

The Welsh Governments’ aims on tackling poverty include:

Reducing poverty, especially persistent poverty amongst some of our poorest people and communities, and reducing the likelihood that people will become poor

Conwy Council, alongside all other Welsh local authorities’ act as a local service provider to deliver a number of grant funded projects with the aim of tackling poverty. As with any project, we need to achieve a considerable number of performance indicators, which include:

The grant funded projects we currently deliver in Conwy include:

Flying Start
Team Around the Family
Let’s Get Working
Rural Families First in Llanrwst

Over the last 12 months, we have driven the quality of our delivery forward through improved and increased training and development for our staff, improving our marketing plans to ensure we are reaching out to as many individuals who requires support as possible and also being the mechanism of support for early intervention and prevention alongside greater engagement with the citizens of Conwy to ensure what we are delivering is exactly what is required. We aim to continue with this method of approach to ensure our delivery is as outcome focused as possible.

Governance is continuously improving through greater involvement and collaboration with our internal audit teams, who ensure delivery and outcomes go hand in hand.

Community and Wellbeing activities for over 55’s

The aim of the Community and Wellbeing activities is to reduce the number of referrals into statutory services as the Wellbeing of Conwy citizens will continuously improve through a number of different approaches such as community integration, education on Wellbeing activities and building confidence.

In November 2015, we were successful in recruiting high calibre and community focused individuals through Intermediate Care Funding, which in turn strengthened our Community Wellbeing Team, led by Jayne Neal.

The focus has been to develop a summer, autumn, spring and winter programme of wellbeing activities in the refurbished Wellbeing Hub in Ty Llywelyn, Llandudno. Activities also reach out to other areas of the Borough which include Abergele, Llanfairfechan and Colwyn Bay and Llanrwst.

We engage with individuals and organisations to deliver these sessions across the borough, thus keeping the expenditure local to Conwy – we call these our providers. We aim to continue working in strong collaboration with these providers to sustain the programme of Wellbeing activities post March 2017, which is when the funding will end.

This project has gathered strong momentum and proved a success in reaching out to individuals with and without needs in improving their personal health & wellbeing across Conwy. We aim to engage with many more people over the next few months.

Some of the activities include:

Therapeutic colouring
Siarad a panad (a Welsh-language group aimed at learners and first language Welsh speakers within rural communities)
Indian Head massage
Tai Chi
Sewing sessions

Community & Wellbeing Service

As part of the Social Care Transformation programme, a new Service Management Structure was established to drive through and implement the projects identified objectives, to bring about the required changes.

The transformation project focused on developing a new Wellbeing Service aimed at developing the strategies to support people to be part of their communities. The aim is to develop community services which will support the most vulnerable. This has required close working with the Third and Independent sector and as a result the service has the oversight of the grants that are used to respond to the commissioning strategy and needs assessment. The Service is also responsible for the first point of contact for adult services Single Point of Access and has operational oversight of a range of prevention services.

Staff Survey

2015 has seen a vast improvement in communication from CCBC to its employees. Vision and leadership are clearly understood and staff recognise their part to play in that vision.

Key Improvements

Leadership at the corporate level

Q2b: I believe that this team has a clear vision for the future + 12.7%
Q2c: I have confidence in the abilities of this leadership team + 9.7%

Leadership at the service level
Q3a: I believe that my service has a clear vision for the future +11.2%

Corporate vision, values and objectives
Q4d: I understand how my work contributes to the Plan +8.8%

Change and modernising the way we work
Q7d: Changes in Conwy are planned and delivered well +10.8%
Q7e: The reasons for change are communicated effectively +14.5%

How we communicate
Q10c: I feel that information in the Team Brief is useful and relevant +9.8%
Of those who have access +11.2%
Q10d: I feel well informed about what is going on in my team +7.8%
Q10e: I feel well informed about what is going on in my service +11.0%
Q10f: I feel well informed about what is going on in Conwy +8.1%

Wellbeing
Q11a: I am aware of the support available from Care First +8.9%

However, when we look at individual impact there is scope to improve personal outcomes of staff. Whilst the PDR process in generally well understood, there is a gap in individual expectations of their job day-to-day and seeing tangible evidence of how well they are performing their job – without knowing this, employees may feel unable to achieve the job satisfaction required.

Key Areas for Improvement

Change and modernising the way we work
Q7b: I am encouraged to come up with new ways of doing things -8.1%

My job and line management
Q8a: I know what is expected of me -3.4%

Health & safety
Q9b: I have the necessary equipment to do my job safely -3.3%

Wellbeing
Q11e: I am able to take sufficient breaks from my work
Q11i: I have not felt stressed because of work in the last 2 years –5.7%
Q11j: I feel that I have enough support from Conwy to help me deal with stress -4.9%
Of those how have felt stressed -2.5%

Personal Development
Q12a: I have had a PDR in the last 12 months -9.2%
Q12b: My PDR includes an assessment of how well I am performing in my job -3.9%

Overall
Q13a: Overall I am satisfied with my job -5.2%
All services have analysed the results for each section, discussed with their teams and have identified action points to respond to the feedback and improve.

Successes within Services

In the previous section, we described how Conwy Social Care underwent a major transformation programme between 2012 and 2015, in order to re-shape services to better meet the requirements of the Social Services and Wellbeing (Wales) Act 2014.

The new service “Sections” are continuously developing and would like to highlight some of their most significant achievements during 2015-16 within this part of the report.

Our new service sections are defined as follows:

In the following pages, each section of the service presents a brief outline of their highlight achievements, but we shall start with a summary of the recent staff survey.

Update on the Social Care Transformation Programme

The Social Care Transformation Programme is now approaching its conclusion. Critical to its success has been the governance arrangements that have been in place at Project and Programme levels.

The scope and scale of the Transformation Programme has been unprecedented, and it is commendable that service delivery and corporate business processes have been maintained during this period.

The transformation programme has been aligned to the service/resident outcomes and 4 key drivers for change, namely:

Delivery of the Social Services and Wellbeing Act
The research phase of the programme (which involved staff from the service developing recommendations)
Regional collaboration and;

The financial challenges the Service and Council continues to face

The Programme comprised 14 projects (which between them had over 60 work packages) that make up the programme are different in their complexity and nature. The projects have all introduced changes or new ways of working, to support the delivery of services and better outcomes for Conwy residents.

The outcomes of the projects are diverse, and include the following:

The establishment of new referral processes and tools, such as the simple assessment “What matters” framework, to draw out information from the client
Enhancement of the Conwy Single Point of Access Service, which provides information, advice and assistance from across sectors
Creation of an Adults Assessment Framework, which focuses on what outcomes people want to achieve
Capital investment to develop new well-being hubs in Llandudno and Llanrwst and the development of wellbeing activity programmes
Creation of new reports to manage performance of the service
Purchase and rollout of the new “Call Confirm Live” system, primarily used by locality care workers through the use of mobile devices.
Realigning resources and delivering a restructure, which includes the development of new Wellbeing, Valuable People and lifespan Disability Service’s, with a focus on prevention
Production and reviewing of safeguarding practices
Modernising the Foster Carer payment model process, to make it more transparent simple, fair and easy to understand
Review exercise completed on the legislation, policies and practices of the Looked After Children Service, with recommendation identified and progressede. to support the service a Duty Worker, Placement and Commissioning Officer and new Fostering Recruitment post has been created and appointed
Development of a Participation and Engagement Strategy, to ensure service users are involved in shaping the delivery of services
Social Care Staff Communication and Engagement Plan produced, with the aim to ensure that all employees are informed, included, listened to and are able to contribute to service improvement
Development of “Llys Gogarth” Combined Residential Service, providing a 52 week, 7 days a week, 10 bed enhanced residential provision and;
other tools, practice frameworks and ICT investment to help staff undertake their roles and support the delivery of quality services

The transformation Programme and projects are all formally coming to an end in June 2016, with the project outcomes becoming part of the services “business as usual”. Any outstanding work is being transferred to be managed and monitored operationally as will be the ongoing review of the service/resident outcome’s over the forthcoming years.

A client testimonial relating to the development of health and wellbeing hubs and the activity programmes:

“There has been a huge void in my life after my wife died. I was wondering how I was going to fill it, what I was going to do with myself. When I came to Ty Llywelyn and was shown round the place and introduced to the programme of their wellbeing activities I thought there was a lot of things I could become involved in. This gave me hope.”

Since that initial visit he has tried a number of activities.

“Getting involved with the various activities at Ty Llywelyn has made an enormous difference to my life. It has filled the vacuum I was experiencing after losing my wife. I have made meaningful connections with people I had met and forged some friendships. Involvement with one of the groups gave me also an opportunity to contribute my skills and expertise in the service of the group. All this had a tremendous impact on my wellbeing and the quality of my life.”

Stability of Placements

The target for 2014/15 (annual measure) for the percentage of children looked after on 31 March who have had three or more placements during the year was 9.5% (lower is better). Conwy’s actual performance for 2015/16 was 10.6%, as 18 children out of a total of 170, had moved placement twice or more during the year.

Stability of placements is quantified through the performance indicator SCC/004 “The percentage of children looked after on 31 March who have had three or more placements during the year.” The target is 9.5%. (Lower is better).

Conwy’s actual performance for 2014/15 was 11.4%, as 18 children out of a total of 158, had moved placement twice or more during the year.

For 2015/16, performance improved to 10.6%, (18 children out of 170).

Some of the placement moves which have counted against us for the purposes of the indicator are; between Residential Placements and Secure Units, rehabilitation plans back to parents or friends/family, bringing children back into “in-house” Foster Care, and moves from high-cost residential placements to Glan yr Afon; all of which were deemed to be in the child’s best interests.

Detailed analysis of 2015/16 data reveals a large number of young people with high level and complex needs. The majority of children in care in Conwy have stable placements. Of the 138 children in Foster Care placements[1] in 2014/15, 113 remained in the same placement throughout the entire year, 20 had one placement move, and 4 had two placement moves. Only 1 had three moves.

A ‘Placement Strategy 2015-18’ has been developed which includes recommendations to monitor placement moves and breakdowns in a more robust and analytical manner. The data will be reviewed on a regular basis with additional qualitative data to be provided by Team Managers as to why moves have taken place.

[1] This excludes those in Kinship care. A kinship carer is an adult who is looking after the child or children of a relative or friend on a full time basis.

Percentage of young people who are known to be engaged in education, training or employment at the age of 19

The target for the percentage of young people formerly looked after with whom the authority is in contact, who are known to be engaged in education, training or employment at the age of 19 is 55%.

This is measured by SCC/033(f) “The percentage of young people formerly looked after with whom the authority is in contact, who are known to be engaged in education, training or employment at the age of 19.”

In 2014/15 the target figure was 55%. We achieved 64%. (9 out of 14 Care Leavers)

The figure for 2015/16 was 54.17% (13 out of 24 Care leavers), which is below target but within the tolerance level.

It should be noted that as the numbers are so small, just one or two cases can affect the percentage drastically.

Performance in this area had been highlighted by CSSIW in the past, and Conwy put together a comprehensive action plan to address the difficulties.

This included collaboration with:

Career’s Wales (Requested a TRAC officer to be dedicated to Care Leavers)
Llandrillo College (Monthly monitoring meetings)
the ‘Let’s Get Working’ programme, and
Conwy’s Education Department
HR providing work opportunities and apprenticeships
Regular NEET panels to ensure that we keep up to date with developments.

Cohorts of future Care Leavers are now being monitored closely and the monthly panels are helping to improve performance in this important area.

Recruitment of Foster Carers

Work to enhance recruitment of Foster Cares has progressed internally with a specific Foster Care recruitment project which has led to the development of a new marketing, recruitment and retention strategy. Progress is also being made on a regional level.

Fostering in Conwy has been re-branded, with new imagery, booklets, web pages, social media channels and promotional videos. It is hoped that the new campaign will attract 15 new Foster Carers annually.

Regionally, there have been developments around sharing capacity across the region, particularly around marketing, recruitment, assessment, agreement around fee structures, and support for Connected Persons (A relative, friend or other person connected with a child. The latter is someone who would not fit the term ‘relative or friend’, but who has a pre-existing relationship with the child.”)