Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Alistair Thompson and Sandra Stockdale.

Councillor Alicia Denny apologised for her late arrival to the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest.

RECOMMENDED that the minutes of the previous meeting of 22 July 2014 be confirmed and signed by the chair as a correct record.

The minutes of the Housing and Social Care Scrutiny Panel meeting held on 22 July 2014 were agreed as a correct record and signed by Councillor Sanders.

The panel's final report will be available for sign-off at this meeting.

RECOMMENDED that the panel sign off this report.

Members of the panel had received a copy of the report in advance of the meeting. Councillor Sanders as chair introduced the report.

Marie Edwards, Service Manager Hospital and Health Services, Adult Social Care was in attendance and expressed her concern regarding recommendation 2 which related to relevant professionals being given 'next of kin' status. She went on to explain that there needs to be a balance of the rights of the service user alongside needing to discharge a patient. It was accepted that sheltered housing professionals are not always available within the time frame. As an example they may be asked in the morning to attend a 2pm meeting. Due to the short notice they are not always able to attend but their views would be taken into consideration during the assessment.

With regards to paragraph 4.4 within the report and conclusion 10, Marie requested that the following additional information be included in the report:

The Senior Manager for Hospital Health Services, ASC clarified that the hospital social work team are not made aware of all service users whom are admitted from sheltered accommodation into hospital and consequently discharged without any involvement from the social care team.  When the ASC team do receive referrals from the wards the social workers see the SHM as a vital part of a service users discharge planning pathway. However this does not afford them automatic rights to be part of the discharge process just because someone lives in a sheltered accommodation block. The  ASC  team on site at QAH actively encourage involvement from SHMs when it's appropriate to do so and when they have the consent of the service user or their family/carer/representative  (when the SU doesn’t have capacity) to involve their SHM in discharge planning. If the SHM is able to attend MDT meetings on the ward as part of a discharge planning process and it is appropriate for them to do so, this will happen. Due to the nature of the SHM job role they need to remain on site most of the time and some SHM do not work weekends and therefore its often difficult for them to come to the hospital at very short notice, which could be from as little as a few hrs or within the two days discharge target timeframe under the Delayed Discharge Act which we have to adhere to otherwise the council could be charged a reimbursement fine of a £100 per patient per day past the two day discharge target.  The Senior Manager for Hospital and Health Services would value the SHM involvement in providing examples when they feel they have not been appropriately involved as it is believed that this is minimal.

The panel were happy to take on board the revision.

With regards to recommendation 1, Marie reported that access to the other IT systems has improved and is continuing to do so. There will never be a single system due to information governance with the database.

Councillor Sanders thanked everyone  ...  view the full minutes text for item 29.

The panel will draft the scoping document and discuss potential witnesses, and the proposed timetable for future meetings to receive evidence on their new review. Officers will be in attendance to assist the panel.

The panel discussed the new topic for review - Isolation and Loneliness.

Lisa Mundy, Independence and Wellbeing Team, Adult Social Care was in attendance and explained that the team had recently undertaken a local piece of co-produced research on social isolation for older Portsmouth residents. She explained that a celebration event had taken place on the 13^th November where professionals, the volunteer peer researchers and some participating interviewees came together to hear about the research and the findings.

The panel felt that it would seem like duplication to undertake a review at this point regarding older persons and therefore agreed to focus on the younger sector, why they feel isolated and what support is available to them.

The panel agreed to meet in the New Year to agree the scoping document, witnesses to be called and the programme of the review.