Social care performance throughout Wales still far too variable

Service users throughout Wales can still expect uncertain results when sourcing social care from local authorities, according to the annual report from the published this week.

The ‘Chief Inspector’s Annual Report for 2011-12: Improving Care and Social Services in Wales’ explores attempts to modernise social care services, from figures gathered up to March last year.

Key objectives for home care provision – which in one sample week was calculated as affecting the lives of 22,740 people – include a focus on the development of voluntary collaboration between councils and the creation of area managers to support integration. The regulator also wants care inspectors to feel they have more time listening and speaking with the social services and providers they visit.

While finding many good examples of modernisation, the Inspectorate concludes that the ‘pace of change’ needs to quicken throughout Wales’s local authorities, finding many examples of adults having to move into residential homes as a result of domiciliary services being inadequate.

Key attributes of social services that have shown positive results include: a focus on early intervention and preventative services; strong partnerships with local health services, and the private and voluntary sector; good support for workforce development; and the adherence to clear threshold levels where enquiries for services are made.

Service variability remains the most severe criticism of social services, however, with a ‘Participation Plan’ one of the imminent measures the Inspectorate is planning for 2013 to transform those services that are still under-performing.

The regulator also accepts that poor variability means a clearer assessment of social care performance is needed than the Chief Inspector’s Report can provide in its current form. For example the report states that, “The fall in the rate of older people supported in the community could indicate that people are finding it harder to obtain help, although in more progressive authorities it could be an indication of success in promoting and supporting preventative services – a dimension that is not easily captured in the current performance indicators.”

Chief inspector Imelda Richardson chose to highlight the work of those services performing well, however, launching the report on a visit to Clydach Court, a specialist dementia project in Rhondda Cynon Taf, saying:

“Clydach Court is a good example of the care people who need it should be able to receive and we are committed to working with them, as well as other providers of care and people who use services, their families and carers to improve standards.

“For the past year we have been talking to people who provide and use services. We have listened to everything people told us to develop our new Participation Plan. Our Plan sets out how people can have a say, become involved in our work and outlines what we intend to do over the next year.

“We want more people to be involved in our work and we believe that in working together we can make a real difference to social care in Wales, realising the Welsh Government’s ambitions set up in Sustainable Social Services.”