North Tyneside Council’s adult social care provision as good
The Care Quality Commission (CQC), has rated North Tyneside Council as good, in how well they are meeting their responsibilities to ensure people have access to adult social care and support under the Care Act (2014).
CQC has a new duty under the Act to assess how local authorities work with their communities and partners to meet their responsibilities. This includes promoting the wellbeing and independence of working age disabled adults, older people, and their unpaid carers to reduce their need for formal support where appropriate. Where support is needed it should provide people with choice and control of how their care needs are met.
CQC looked at nine areas spread across four themes to assess how well the authority is meeting their responsibilities in order to create their good rating. CQC has given each of these nine areas a score out of four with one being the evidence shows significant shortfalls, and four showing an exceptional standard.
James Bullion, CQC’s chief inspector of adult social care and integrated care, said:
“At our assessment of North Tyneside Council’s adult social care services, we found leaders had a close working relationship with partner organisations to ensure residents across North Tyneside had good access to health and social care services.
“We heard about their plans with other organisations to support people with mental health needs, homelessness and drug or alcohol abuse, which were known challenges in North Tyneside. This included recruiting a specialist substance misuse social worker to help people struggling with alcohol and substance misuse.
“The authority was also working in partnership with a local NHS trust to provide specialist adult social care support and services to younger people, including those with complex needs, to help them live fulfilling lives before reaching adulthood. This had provided positive outcomes for their health and wellbeing.
“We heard positive feedback from people around hospital discharges, rehabilitation, and reablement services. For example, the authority’s ‘home first’ approach, which uses assistive technology to support people to continue to live more independently, was working well and improved people’s quality of life by helping them maintain their independence.
“They also recognised that there was an increased demand on unpaid carers. The authority was working with them and partner organisations to improve the support available, including access to information and advice, respite support, and links to the care and connect service which promotes people’s health and wellbeing.
“However, the local authority has acknowledged it needs to improve its waiting times in some areas. For example, unpaid carers felt the local authority were good at providing crisis and urgent care, but there were delays in assessments and reviews, as well as confusion about the processes between short-term and long-term support.
“North Tyneside Council should be pleased with the many positive findings in our report and are already building on this with further improvement plans. We look forward to returning to see how they have built on these areas of good practice and how their plans mature.”
The assessment team also found:
- The authority understood local safeguarding risks and issues, including self-harm, alcohol and drug misuse, as well as homelessness.
- The authority had processes in place to ensure they learned from incidents to help prevent them from happening again.
- Mental health and learning disability reablement teams offered specialist support to people living with multiple complex needs, to help them live more independently and prevent the need for long-term support.
- People could easily access equipment and minor home adaptations to maintain their independence and continue living in their own homes.
- The authority’s website was easy to access and understand, and there were good links to information and advice about adult social care and healthy living.
- Data showed 32.65% of unpaid carers in North Tyneside accessed support or services allowing them to take a break from caring for more than 24 hours, compared to the England average of 16.14%.
- The views of people using services, partner organisations and staff were listened to, and their opinions were considered.
However:
- Waiting times for occupational therapy assessments had increased in the 12 months before the assessment. The authority was working to address this, however at the time of the assessment the changes hadn’t had time to be embedded.
- The process wasn’t consistent for people transitioning from children to adults’ services, as well as people with mental health needs moving into the community after being in hospital. However, at the time of the assessment the authority was working to address this.
- More oversight was needed regarding the time it was taking for safeguarding enquiries to be resolved, and investigations were taking longer than expected.
The assessment will be published on CQC’s website on Wednesday 9 July.