On 1st December 2021, the government published the social care reform White Paper. People at the heart of care, which sets out a 10-year vision for transforming the delivery of health and social care. The paper detailed that one of the priorities is for 80% of Health and social care services that are registered with CQC (Care Quality Commission), to have digital social care records by March 2024 and non-registered services to have digital records by March 2025. The Department of Health and Social care and NHS England are leading the Digital Social Care Programme and have devised preferred suppliers that are compliant with the asks from the white paper including being DSPT and GDPR compliant. CQC have endorsed this, releasing further guidance on the 20th September 2023, Digital Record Systems: achieving good outcomes for people using adult social care services.

Wirral Council in October 2022, opted to in-source several previously outsourced commissioned services that deliver direct social care services to Wirral. These provider services included Wirral Evolutions Day service provision and Shared Lives Wirral. In addition, the Adult Social Care and Public Health Committee approved the development of a new Council led Community Reablement offer, ‘AbleMe’. Currently there is no Electronic Care Delivery Management System (ECDMS) in place for these services to use, previously this would have been available from the outsourced providers. ECDMS is required to operate within adult social care best practice and to be legislative compliant with the Care Quality Commission. As these Council led provider services deliver direct care services to Wirral residents, it is a requirement for the Council to provide a ECDMS - an electronic system that manages all aspects of the delivery services, including client records, detailed care plans, risk assessments, medicines management, staffing records and rostering for service delivery.

• Total cost for 3 year contract £120,452

• £32,364 per year for any additional contract extension. 1+1
32,634

• Total cost if 1+1 extensions applied £185,180

Option 1 - Do nothing
Description: Not purchasing or implementing the required appropriate Electronic Care Delivery Management system (ECDMS).

Resource Requirements:

• Direct delivery services would need to use a paper-based system which would have increased resource and capacity implications which impacts on service delivery and improved outcomes for people accessing the services.
• Increased Administrative resource required to operate a paper-based system.
• Storage and file archive management.
• Printing documents and costs.
• Stationary increased costs.
• Human errors may occur and lost paperwork resulting in increased complaints and incidents.

Cost:
• Additional administrative support.
• Appropriate long term secure document storage facilities for paper-based records.
• Printing costs to sustain paper-based system.
• Increased auditing time for paper-based quality assurance process.

Quality

• Continuity – the risk of service disruption and single points of failure would continue.
• Resilience – this will rely on manual, people intensive process, and not improve digital maturity within the council.
• Duplication – of skills and efforts of staff, low staff capacity to meet demand and not releasing staff time to care.

Risks
• Council services not compliant with Care Act and CQC legislation and regulation.
• Reputational damage if council not able to deliver services of a high quality.
• System not able to “speak to others”/interoperability, so delays in transfer of care, which has wider health and care repercussions.

The decision has been taken under Part 3 Section C - Overview and Scheme of Delegations of Authority to Officers as the decision is not reserved to a Committee or Sub-Committee and the Director is satisfied that paragraphs 2(a) to 2(c) apply.

Background Papers

·  Strategic Change Business case- 08/11/2023

·  Strategic Change Business case – 11/12/2023

All in house provider services were agreed to be brought back in house through the ASCPH committee process.

·  Community Reablement Service- ASCPH committee report 13/06/23

·  Shared Live Services ASCPH committee report- 23/09/2021.

·  Wirral Evolutions ASCPH committee report.