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Medway Councils’ care services ‘requires improvement’

Hitting assessment targets and recruiting new staff were some of the problems highlighted by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in their new report.

The CQC published a new report on Friday which details Medway Council narrowly missed out on a ‘good’ rating as a result of long wait times and frequent inconsistencies concerning inequalities and recruitment and retention.

When conducting the inspection, the leading independent regulator considered nine different factors to review how well the local authority is meeting their caring responsibilities, with three being rated as showing a good standard, but six as needing some improvement – totalling an average of 59%.

To give context, according to the CQC’s criteria a ‘good’ rating comes above 63%.

‘At this assessment we found staff who were proud to work at Medway Council and were passionate about serving local people,’ James Bullion, chief inspector of adult social care and integrated care at the CQC said. ‘However, the council faced challenges with staffing and recruitment, particularly with adult social care staff, which was having an impact on how long people were waiting for assessments and the effectiveness of their services.’  

According to the report, the majority of issues discovered majorly affected wait times, especially for equipment. The council was found to deliver basic home equipment in a timely manner, but complex items took 98 days to arrive.

Against this backdrop, voluntary sector partners also informed inspectors about ‘unacceptable’ waits for home modifications – one example included a resident that was unable to leave their home for 15 months due to adaption works not being completed. Overall, inspectors revealed the maximum wait time for an equipment assessment in the last 12 months was 356 days.

On the surface, news of the long waits already looks poor, but the situation escalates when considering people’s safety.  

James remarked: ‘One of the areas this was impacting was safeguarding. Staff weren’t always able to contact people in a timely way following a safeguarding referral. Leaders were aware of the issue and work had begun to improve this, specifically for those waiting to hear back regarding information of concern.

‘We heard mixed feedback when we spoke to people using services and about their individual experiences. Some people gave us positive feedback of being supported and listened to during the assessment and the ease of direct contact with their allocated social worker. However, we were also told of an example where staff weren’t knowledgeable about the specific disabilities of a person and their family members felt staff had been reluctant to help or support.’

On the subject of support, the council was also found to need help meeting its financial assessment targets – a way of looking at people’s income and savings to see whether they qualify for financial assistance to help with care costs.

The CQC found Medway aimed to complete financial assessments within 56 days, but they were averaging 181 days. This is because of staff shortages and delays in responses to information requests from social workers. To address this, the council have said new staff members are being trained to undertake the task of completing financial assessments in a quick yet efficient manner.

Responding to the report’s findings, Teresa Murray, Deputy Leader and Portfolio Holder for Adult Social Care at Medway Council said: ‘I would always want our services to be good or outstanding, but this report, only four percentage points away from good, shows us where we are, shows us that we know what we need to do, and endorses our cause for an improvement journey that we were already on for this important service.

‘I would like to say that in two years’ time we’ll be where we want to be. Now, that’s a big promise, but I think if we continue to make investments, if we continue to work in the way that we’re doing, only four percentage points away from good now, we’ve got a really encouraging chance of being in that place.’

Other areas highlighted by the CQC as needing improvement include carer assessments, which determine whether someone needs support as an unpaid carer, and care act assessments – a tool that analyses a person’s care needs.

The report shows that whilst the wait time for carer assessments averaged at 29 days in the last 12 months – with a target of 28 days – some carers had waited up to 530 days as cases were not reassigned if a staff member was off sick.

Concluding the report, James details that whilst there is still work to be done, the council seem to be doing all they can to improve their adult social care services.

He said: ‘We found the recruitment and retention of adult social care staff was a significant challenge across Medway. Care organisations told us that poor collaboration with the authority on appropriate working conditions including pay, sick pay or travel time had contributed to this. They also fed back that there also needed to be more collaboration on the cost of care, and to make sure contracting arrangement were transparent and fair.’

‘Leaders at Medway are aware of where improvements need to be made and to ensure people have access to the services they need,’ James continued. ‘We look forward to returning to see how they’ve done this and how their current plans mature.’

The full results of the inspection can be accessed here.

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Emily Whitehouse
Writer and journalist for Newstart Magazine, Social Care Today and Air Quality News.
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