Agenda item

Families and Wellbeing Dashboard (including Public Health)

Minutes:

The Committee considered the report of the Strategic Director of Families and Wellbeing and the Director of Public Health which provided an update in relation to the 2014/15 performance of the Families and Wellbeing and Public Health Directorate against the delivery of their Directorate Plans for 2014/15 whilst also providing an update of current performance as at Year End 2014/15.

 

The report translated the priorities set out in the Directorate Plans into a coherent and measurable set of performance outcome measures and targets. Members were requested to consider the details of the report and highlight any issues.

 

The Directorate Plan 2014/15 Performance Report set out performance against 57 outcome measures for 2014/15, 32 were rated green, 12 were rated amber and 11 were rated red whilst 2 were currently unrated. The measured 11 rated red had action plans which referred to:

 

·  Smoking Quitters (4 weeks)

·  Proportion of opiate drug users that left drug treatment successfully who do not re-present to treatment within 6 months

·  Achievement gap between pupils eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) and their peers achieving at key Stage 2

·  % of Looked After Children achieving KS2

·  The % of LAC achieving expected levels at Key Stage 4

·  Inequality of achievement of a Level 2 qualification by the age of 19 (FSM)

·  Inequality of achievement of a Level 3 qualification by the age of 19 (FSM)

·  Timeliness of Adoptions, within 12 months of decision date

·  Average monthly bed days lost due to delayed transfers of care per 100,000

·  Overall satisfaction of carers with social services

·  Proportion of people who use services who find it easy to find information about support

 

A Member asked that in relation to the target set for smoking quitters, was there a discussion to be had as to making this a more achievable target. In response, the Director of Public Health indicated that the target was set nationally however these targets were to be re-defined to reflect the impacts of e-cigarettes. She further indicated that they were currently looking to see if the services currently provided could be commissioned in a different way to reflect the increased usage of e-cigarettes; this piece of work would be brought back to Cabinet for decision in July 2015.

 

In relation to the target relating to the achievement gap for those children in receipt of receiving FSM (free school meals) against those who were not, the Director of Children’s Services indicated that in KS2 the gap in terms of Reading and Maths had shown a reduction year on year but this was not the case with writing. The impacts since the introduction of the Pupil Premium was improving and helping the target outcomes.

 

In relation to the average monthly lost bed days due to delayed transfer, the Director of Adult Social Services explained that people were in hospital longer than they needed to be, however, the Council was now in a position to organise same day domiciliary care and there was also an integrated discharge team; the Department also commissioned step up/step down services and Age UK had been commissioned to support families to identify their home of choice. There was also the work on Vanguard working with health partners to support people in their own homes.

 

The Chair indicated that the next piece of work on the work programme was a review to look at unnecessary hospital admissions and there would be a Spotlight session on Vanguard.

 

In relation to the rate of LAC per 10,000, The Director of Children’s Services indicated that from September 2013, the early help offer, youth offending service, intensive family support (troubled families programme), early years and youth service has been one service together under “Targeted Services” this was being continuously reviewed to ensure that working arrangements are meeting the needs of Wirral’s vulnerable children and reducing the likelihood of their needs worsening.

 

Specialist Children’s Social Care Services had also been re-organised in June 2015, and there are now four Children in Care Teams in three locations across Wirral. These new teams would focused on ensuring that children in care all have good, outcome based plans to ensure as many as possible move to live in permanent placements, such as adoption or special guardianship, where they are no longer in care. With strong approaches to early help and intervention, through work such as the troubled families programme as well as increased focus on the needs of children when they become looked after, it was projected that the number of children in care would reduce to about 450 over the next five years.

 

In relation to a request from a Member for information regarding the proportion of completed scheduled monitoring visits to residential homes, the Director of Adult Social Services indicated that the information was collated by the Contracts Team and agreed to share this with Members.

 

The Chair indicated that she had recently raised and it was discussed at the Co-ordinating Committee that Members had a training need as they wanted to better understand the information they were provided with in relation to performance reports so that they could monitor trends etc. to see if there were any improvements. The Strategic Director of Transformation and Resources was requested to develop an appropriate training and development plan for Members to help them to understand performance information and data including their analysis and evaluation.

 

The Strategic Director, Children and Families indicated that she was pleased that department was progressing well and the Wirral Plan – Vision 2020 had been recently published, its focus being on outcomes.

 

In relation to smoking quitters using e-cigarettes and in response to a Member, the Director of Public Health indicated that exact data could not be captured on this, only an estimate could be provided based on the number of people accessing the services provided by the Council using e-cigarettes as their chosen method to quit smoking.

 

RESOLVED:

 

The 2014/16 Families and Wellbeing Directorate Plan Performance Management Report be noted.

 

Supporting documents: