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Cabinet Member Question Time Cabinet Cabinet Members’ Reports The following reports from Cabinet Members cover the period from 24th July 2009. Leader of the Council - Mr Henry Smith 1 On 16th September the Leader welcomed Phil Hope MP, Minister for Care Services, to the Maidenbower Day Centre to meet residents from the Crawley area who have taken personal control of their social care support arrangements funded by the County Council through ‘self-directed support’. The Leader highlighted how the County Council was leading on the personalisation agenda through a move from the overly bureaucratic to one that puts vulnerable people at the centre of the care they receive. An innovative website has been set up which enables residents to select and compare care providers across West Sussex. It ties in with the launch of the 2009/10 West Sussex Care Guide which gives information and advice on support and care services for adults across West Sussex. The Leader also took the opportunity to stress how an approach like self-directed support would be even better had the County Council not received such poor financial settlements over the past seven years. 2 On 25th September the Leader, together with the County Chairman, Cabinet Members and Dr Walsh for the Liberal Democrats, met the West Sussex Members of Parliament. The Leaders of the West Sussex borough and district councils were also invited to attend this particular meeting to participate in the main item for discussion which focused on prospects for finance, services and joint working. The meeting also received updates on Children and Young People’s Services, Academies, swine flu, the Comprehensive Area Assessment and the National Park. These meetings are held two or three times a year to discuss issues affecting the County Council and its residents and to help inform MPs so they are better placed to represent those concerns at Westminster and with their constituents. 3 This year the Leader has attended all the main political party conferences to lead the South East County Leaders’ (SECL’s) promotion of their policy theme - ‘Bringing it Home: Making Public Services Local’. At each conference SECL has hosted a fringe event and the Leader, as Chairman of SECL, has chaired a panel of politicians, commentators and journalists to debate the topic. The aim of each event has been to promote the interests of communities in the South East with the participants discussing why they, and the next government, need to make public services local. The events were very successful and attracted keen interest and support for the policy being promoted by SECL. Deputy Leader - Mr Lionel Barnard 4 In April the Deputy Leader approved the On-line Service Delivery Strategy as the mandate for action to deliver the County Council’s vision to deliver more effective and efficient services to all customers. Since that time the Deputy County Council Report 99 16th October 2009 Cabinet Leader has been working with officers on the development of some of the key deliverables of the strategy. The main focus has been the development of a new website. This has included the procurement of new IT equipment to run the website, in particular to provide on-line payment facilities, a service which the Registration Service has recently introduced to its customers. A specialist partner will work alongside the newly created On-line Service Delivery (OSD) Office on the look and feel of the website and the OSD office will work with all directorates on an audit and migration of existing web pages. A members’ portal is also being considered to deal with complaints and correspondence through a co-ordinated process. Cabinet Member for Adults’ Services - Mr Peter Catchpole 5 The Cabinet Member welcomes the inspection being undertaken by the Care Quality Commission of adults’ social care, with particular emphasis on adult safeguarding and increased choice and control for older people. The inspection, which includes interviews with customers, carers, officers, elected members and representatives of partner and voluntary organisations, will check a variety of elements including performance management and governance arrangements, resource allocation and the consistency of professional knowledge and performance. The County Council’s capacity to improve will also be assessed. The inspection report will be issued shortly before Christmas. 6 The Cabinet Member was pleased to open the Littlehampton Learning Shop on 18th September following building work and refurbishment to make the premises compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act. The learning shop, which will be open on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., will offer residents a wide range of courses including ICT and languages, with employability skills and core work skills such as English and maths. The shop will bring adult learning provision to the heart of Littlehampton town centre and it is hoped will make a significant contribution to improving employability as well as providing information, advice and guidance. 7 The Cabinet Member commends those involved in the resettlement of vulnerable older people, all UK Nationals, arriving at Gatwick Airport from Zimbabwe. The operation, funded by the Government, is an excellent example of collaborative working: County Council, Health Service and voluntary sector staff have worked extremely hard to undertake preliminary social and health assessments and arrange temporary accommodation until these vulnerable people move on to the area in which they will reside permanently. Since April, 15 groups of vulnerable people, all aged over 70 years, have arrived on weekly flights and have been accommodated for a maximum of two nights. Over the next month younger adults (aged around 45 years) with learning difficulties and mental health issues, are expected to arrive in the country to be resettled. 8 Earlier this year, as part of the ‘Keep West Sussex Working’ initiative, the County Council funded the Citizen’s Advice Bureaux (CAB) in West Sussex to provide additional debt advice until the end of September. A new 100 County Council Report 16th October 2009 Cabinet contracted service for the provision of Community Legal Advice, which will enable greater volumes of advice to be delivered at no additional cost to the local authorities and be funded jointly with borough and district councils and the Legal Services Commission, will commence in April 2010. The new service was to have been in place by October 2009, but the delay of six months left a potential period during which there would be less advice available, including at the time of the year when demand for such advice usually peaks. The Cabinet Member is therefore pleased that, with the assistance of borough and district councils, funding has been made available to enable the CAB to continue to provide a higher level of debt advice until the end of March 2010. Cabinet Member for Children and Young People’s Services - Mrs Pat Arculus 9 Following a recent review of progress on the Intervention Notice the Minister of State for Children and Young People asked the County Council to establish an Improvement Board to oversee progress with its improvement plans. Chaired by the Executive Director Adults and Children, the Board comprises representatives from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the Government Office for the South East and the County Council. The first meeting of the Board took place on 27th August and the County Council reported that work on the backlog of initial assessments had been completed. The Board will meet monthly and will also review the County Council’s progress with the implementation of the Children’s Delivery Programme, recruitment and retention of social workers and the development of an electronic case management system. The decision whether to come out of intervention is not expected before March 2010 and will be made by the Minister. 10 On 8th September the Cabinet Member attended a meeting of the West Sussex Rural Partnership focusing on children and young people. During the meeting the Cabinet Member gave a presentation about the work of the Children’s Trust and how it aims to improve the outcomes for all children and young people living in West Sussex. The Cabinet Member explained how the Children and Young People’s Plan and related initiatives were being developed to provide better family support and childcare provision in rural areas and emphasised the importance of working with the Rural Partnership. The Cabinet Member highlighted how the roll out of Children and Family Centres has been adapted to provide a mobile service. Cabinet Member for Communications - Mr Brad Watson 11 The Cabinet Member congratulates Penoyre and Prasad, the architect for Crawley Library, on winning the ‘Overall Winner’ award at this year’s Design and Sustainability Awards. The building incorporates many sustainable design features that the awards aim to champion, including a mixed mode ventilation system, biomass boiler and sedum roof. Building work has now started at East Grinstead Library to remodel the ground floor to accommodate a Children and Family Centre. During the work, which will be County Council Report 101 16th October 2009 Cabinet completed in February 2010, a limited library service will be provided from temporary accommodation to the rear of the existing building. 12 The Cabinet Member is pleased that this year’s Summer Reading Challenge for children was once again very successful in encouraging children to continue to read throughout the summer. This year’s theme of ‘Quest Seekers’ proved particularly popular and over 12,000 children registered across all 36 libraries and three mobiles in West Sussex. Final figures are still to be confirmed but it seems likely that the number of children completing the challenge, by reading six books, will exceed the 2008 figure of 5,900. 13 On 16th and 17th September the Cabinet Member attended a meeting of the Assembly of European Regions Bureau and Standing Committee on Institutional Affairs.
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