Agenda for Overview & Scrutiny Commission on Tuesday, 13th December, 2011, 4.00pm
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Agenda and minutes
Venue: Council Chamber, Hove Town Hall. View directions
Contact: Tom Hook Head of Scrutiny
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Additional documents: Minutes: 52a Declarations of Substitutes
There were none.
52b Declarations of Interests
There were none.
52c Declaration of Party Whip
There were none.
52d Exclusion of Press and Public
In accordance with section 100A(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, it was considered whether the press and public should be excluded from the meeting during the consideration of any items contained in the agenda, having regard to the nature of the business to be transacted and the nature of the proceedings and the likelihood as to whether, if members of the press and public were present, there would be disclosure to them of confidential or exempt information as defined in section 100I (1) of the said Act.
RESOLVED: That the press and public be not excluded from the meeting.
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Minutes of the meetings held on 1 November and 21 November 2011 PDF 74 KB Additional documents: Minutes: 53.1 The minutes of the meetings held on 1 November and 21 November 2011 were agreed and signed by the Chair. |
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Chair's Communications Additional documents: Minutes: 54.1 The Chair reminded the meeting that the proceedings were being webcast and would be available for repeat viewing. |
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Public Questions/ Letters from Councillors/Referrals from Committees/Notices of Motion referred from Council Additional documents: Minutes: 55.1 There were none. |
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Intelligent Commissioning - summary PDF 282 KB
Report of Strategic Director, Communities to follow. Additional documents: Minutes: 56.1 The Chair of OSC Councillor Gill Mitchell reminded the meeting of the scrutiny workshops on pilots for Intelligent Commissioning (IC) held in March, and invited the Chief Executive to present the report.
56.2 John Barradell (JB) thanked the representatives from all the services involved in the pilots and IC to date and set the context: the need to reduce the cost of public services for the foreseeable future, making the biggest impact with the resources available; more opportunities to work differently with partnership organisations including the community and voluntary sector to ‘unlock value’ for the City and its citizens; and delivering the aspirations of the City as outlined in the Sustainable Community Strategy, at a time of increasing demand eg around people of working age, older people and addressing more equalities issues. There was also a Council re-alignment to bring skills and capacity to enable work in this way.
56.3 The Chief Executive outlined the three initial pilots; the impact of alcohol on the City, drug-related deaths and domestic violence; that were interrelated and could not be ‘fixed’ by one organisation alone.
56.3 The Strategic Director, Communities David Murray (DM) detailed some of the lessons learned from the pilots. Less time should be spent on gathering information and more on analysing it. A better early understanding of available resources was needed, plus an acknowledgement of the time taken for a culture change to new ways of working to bring about better outcomes for the community. There was no ‘one size fits all’ – flexibility and understanding was required for different circumstances. The lessons were now being applied widely to IC within the Corporate Plan, and the Local Strategic Partnership on a day to day basis.
56.4 The Lead Commissioner, ASC and Health Denise D’Souza (DD) said commissioning had been undertaken in ASC for many years with NHS colleagues. The difference with IC was that other public services such as licensing and the police were closely involved, so preventive measures could be better coordinated and the impact felt across a wide range of services rather than ASC alone. DD said formerly there were many different targets and action plans relating to alcohol in the city; there was now a Commissioning Plan that dealt with not only services but also policy, culture and a Strategy across different organisations.
56.5 Dr Tom Scanlon, Director of Public Health, (TS) outlined the Alcohol Programme Board that covered four key aspects - the culture of alcohol use, availability of alcohol (licensing), Night-time economy(led by the Police), and treatment and prevention of alcohol misuse - and dealt with strategic oversight, performance and problem solving. The ‘intelligent’ part was bringing more people together and giving them joint responsibility for a problem affecting us all. This new approach has allowed culture change to be addressed eg via the innovative big alcohol debate events to bring about a better understanding of the issues, more early identification and explicit treatment work and therefore more positive results. The funding available to deal with alcohol problems in the city is also now clearer, he said. 56.6 Having formerly been somewhat sceptical, TS said he was now more convinced of the merits of IC in areas such as alcohol and substance misuse as it brought a much more coherent approach and this bodes well for the future.
56.7 Acting Police Superintendent Simon Nelson (SN) stated that formerly it had been frustrating that there was no coordinated strategy on alcohol. There was now effective collaboration both with medium and long-term plans and IC now extended to the operational level. Police licensing officers and trading standards officers were now successfully working together on the threat of counterfeit alcohol. There was close working with A&E on alcohol-related harm and during the year 250 fewer people had been assaulted due to partnership measures and a comprehensive plan, he said.
56.8 DM gave the example of advice and financial inclusion services; another area of increasing need and reducing resources that was applying the lessons learned from the IC pilots. This was already a data-rich area, and there was working with the CVSF and advice agencies and across the council on a needs analysis and ‘co-production ‘ (agreed shared outcomes). It was being developed faster than the pilots although using the same IC principles, to maximise the money available and maximise the outcomes for people. There was still much to do; but this is how we now work, he stated.
56.9 Terry Parkin, Strategic Director, People (TP) said that ‘People’ spends 2/3 of the council’s spend and employs ¾ of the council’s staff. Securing services through commissioning had been happening since 2006 and was central to the way we now work. Working jointly with West Sussex had already reduced significantly costs of commissioning independent fostering places. The Child Poverty Strategy was adopting a similar approach that has clearly identified outcomes, which is central to any effective commissioning and essential to drive up standards, he said.
56.10 Children with disabilities was also an area based around commissioning principles working with parents, the third sector and providers and again there had been significant reductions in cost even though children’s needs are generally more complex than before. We can drive down the cost of placements by being clear about what we want the placements to achieve, he said.
56.11 Head of Adult Assessment Brian Doughty (BD) described the Assessment and Delivery Unit that assesses the social care needs of vulnerable care adults and older people – people with disabilities, mental health and/or substance misuse issues. This had a gross budget of £83 million, 90% of which was commissioned in the independent and voluntary sector. He reiterated that commissioning was not outsourcing, nor was it new since the NHS and Community Care Act (1990), but there was a new move from individual commissioning to aggregated commissioning of services.
56.12 Giving more control to individual customers often involved giving individuals their own budget via Personalisation or Self-directed support and also fitted people’s needs with agreed outcomes. This was a different type of IC process; to ensure that services were available for people to buy. Two particularly effective examples were; ensuring there are enough Personal Assistants, and ‘operationalising’ in partnership with Health and Police colleagues and a range of other service areas regarding hospital discharge, better re-ablement and safeguarding adults at risk.
56.13 IC work on alcohol drugs and financial inclusion would reduce demand on the services and therefore also on the budgets, he stated.
SN: Hen and Stag parties are good examples where we now have a broader understanding of the impact of events in the City.
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The Future for Discretionary Grants PDF 89 KB
Report of Strategic Director, Communities. Additional documents: Minutes: 57.1 Lead Commissioner Communities and Equality Mary Evans (ME) introduced the report on the vision, criteria and process for the 3- Year Strategic Grants 2014 – 2016, for which there was a long lead-in time, and Annual Grants 2012- 2013. The report had been written with the support of representatives of the Community and Voluntary Sector who had emphasised the importance of the grants programmes in consultations on intelligent commissioning. She noted that the budget was not yet finalised.
57.2 ME highlighted the value of the grants programme to residents, recipient organisations and the local authority and summarised the draft vision and criteria based on the Corporate Plan and Sustainable Community Strategy, together with the application procedures and decision-making process. She pointed out the details of current grants, showing the wide range of recipient organisations.
57.3 The Chair Councillor Gill Mitchell invited questions and comments for taking forward to January Cabinet.
a) WM: Regarding active citizen participation; how are Neighbourhood Councils envisaged to link with the grant funding process? ME: The grant funding is not specifically to support the development of Neighbourhood Council s - that would be separate - but any organisation that fit the criteria can apply and can be supported DM: This is a good question for the future. A key point is that, while we are encouraging interesting ideas on new forms of neighbourhood governance, we do need to avoid communities competing over finite resources. There would be a separate pot of money and we hope generally to be able to give the go-ahead for Neighbourhood Councils where agreed by Members.
57.4 Jonathan Best Grants Manager detailed more of the background to the grants programmes and the types of organisations eligible to apply for different funding streams. He answered questions on the role of officers and Members including Members Advisory Group (MAG) and the Cabinet Member plus the £3,000 level of grant provided to MAG for comment as set out in paragraph 7 (report Appendix 2 page 23 refers).
b) CS: Its good to see a long list of organisations we support especially when we can encourage innovation. DM: The Team also does great work to help organisations secure funding from alternative sources.
57.5 Members recalled the call-in of the Grants decision on the Crewe Club in the previous 3-year round of funding and noted that the organisation concerned found an alternative support package.
c) MF: I prefer written references to be included where possible (eg paragraphs 4.5, 4.6). JB: Much of the source material is included on the website and in the All-Councillor annual report. d) SP: How will the economic climate impact on the funding overall – will the list of organisations get shorter? ME: We can’t fully fund all CVS organisations we would like to, and other sources of funding may be removed, but funding of core costs can help organisations to function and apply elsewhere. It is possible that fewer organisations will receive grants in future years. JB: We have also done a lot of new work this year (report Appendix 1) to help grant recipients in relation to future intelligent commissioning opportunities, shared outcomes for the city in line with the priorities of the Corporate Plan and Sustainable Community Strategy, GMc: Across the sector more organisations are facing crisis. We are relieved that the grants programme is being maintained at this level. It is like the engine that drives the sector. Without it, organisations that are mostly small in Brighton & Hove, would not be able to attract other sources of funding. At present organisations do not necessarily have all the skills and capacity needed to come together to bid for commissioning which are much larger pieces of work. Intelligent commissioning linking with grant funding is further advanced here than at local authorities.
57.6 Members noted that the Grants Team was well-received and widely respected and thanked the officers for their work
57.7 RESOLVED: That feedback be provided to Cabinet and the proposed vision, criteria and process for a full programme of grants 2013-16 including both Three Year Strategic & Annual be endorsed.
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Additional documents: Minutes: UPDATE FROM OVERVIEW AND SCRUTINY COMMITTEES; CYPOSC
58.1 Councillor Stephanie Powell said she enjoyed Chairing CYPOSC, and tackling challenging topics. As well as 8 cross party Members CYPOSC also comprised 7 co-optees: 2 statutory educational representatives and a parent governor, CVSF, youth services representative from the University plus one representative each from the youth council and from the 16+ Advisory Board.
58.2 She had seated the Youth Council and Voluntary Sector representatives nearest to her as Chair CYPOSC meetings, to ensure they are heard.
58.3 So far the 3 public meetings had included: presentations from senior managers; Ofsted inspections on safeguarding and looked after children; services for children with autism for which CYPOSC requested a satisfaction survey; the Parent Carer’s Council views on the future of SEN, plus SEN pilots. CYPOSC also received a letter from Cllr. Mitchell on calculating home to school distances for school admissions, and asked for a report.
58.4 The Committee had commented on primary and secondary schools performance, plus post 16 education and training, partnership working and Local Authority support. Careers advice and implications of schools test results were also raised as significant issues.
58.5 Either as CYPOSC Chair or together with CYPOSC Deputy Chair Cllr Jeane Lepper, or with the Committee as a whole, Cllr Powell had met with CVSF, Youth Council reps, Amaze, and visited City College. She also planned to attend a meeting of Special Schools head teachers.
58.6 The Committee had held workshops on the draft youth services strategy. In the New Year CYPOSC hope to hear about a needs assessment on children’s homes, homelessness and the cost of emergency hostel provision in April.
58.7 Asked about Academies in Brighton & Hove, Cllr Powell said CYPOSC would need to consider this and other changes to education, in its next work programme.
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Items to go forward to Cabinet, Cabinet Member Meeting or Full Council Additional documents: Minutes: 59.1 It was noted that comments on Intelligent Commissioning and Grants would be forwarded to Cabinet Members. |