Issue - meetings

The Committee considered the Annual Report of the Statutory Director of Social Care Services 2022/23 which detailed the performance of social care services in the county.

There was a statutory requirement for the Director of Social Services to report annually to their Council on the delivery and performance as well as plans for the improvement of the whole range of Social Services.

It was noted that the report was still in draft and would be further revised prior to completion.

The Director of Community Services highlighted some of the key headline issues detailed within the report.  He advised that adult services area was recovering from the pandemic and had been under severe stress primarily due to lack of resources.  It was stated that the source of the recruitment difficulties was due to the overall state of the employment market as there aren’t enough working age people to do the jobs across all sectors including hospitality.  A major revision had been done on recruitment and retention but that it had not resolved all the fundamental shortages within the workforce. .

The Committee noted that in terms of older people the report identified the length of hospital stay with 75% and sometimes up to 80% of frail and elderly people within those bed with the average length of stay in Glangwili and Prince Philip hospitals being more than double that of equivalent hospitals.

In terms of learning disabilities, the Authority had met new demand and the number of people entering formal residential care had not increased however, it was felt that progress in mobilising community resource to support and reduce the overall number of people in residential care was not progressing as anticipated due to the length of time required to set up alternative settings.

The Director of Community Services informed the Committee that in relation to children with disabilities the service was seeing an increase in demand from families and the number of children on the child protection register had also increased.  Despite the issues evidence showed that the Authority was making safe judgements in relation to children.

The Chair noted the positive comments from CIW and thanked the Director of Community Services and staff involved for their hard work.

Amongst the questions/observations raised on the report were the following:-

·    In response to concern raised about the record deficit with the Health Board budgets and the potential impact this may have on the  Authority, the Director of Community Services advised that between Welsh Government and the Health Boards some difficult decisions would have to be made.  However, it was prudent to identify that any joint initiatives such as Delta Well-being could be impacted but that strategically the Authority had a very good relationship with the Health Board and it was hoped that initiative which were saving money and meeting need would not be impacted. 

·    In relation to the risk identified regarding the high rate of inflation, the Director of Community Services responded by advising that the Authority was having to absorb  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4