The Assistant Director for Integrated Services and Commissioning presented the report of the Director of Care and Health which provided an update on the Unscheduled Care Programme workstream for Care Market Sufficiency. The purpose of the workstream was to ensure sufficiency in the community care market to respond to local needs, and to remove barriers to people leaving hospital care to either go to their own home or into domiciliary care. Capacity and demand modelling had been undertaken to assess future demand and prepare for it. The numbers of people requiring packages had not increased but the complexity of the packages had since 2019. The numbers of clients awaiting packages had reduced to zero and there were also six new providers in the care market.

Members asked about the due diligence for new providers and about recruitment and retention. They also asked about the consideration of cultural diversity among carers and clients and were interested in seeing figures on this at future meetings.

Resolved: That

1.  the improvements to the care market capacity and flow for domiciliary care be noted.

2.   the work completed with care homes to improve safe transfers of care from a hospital setting be noted.

3.  the future work of the Care Market Sufficiency Group be endorsed.