Agenda item

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 who had been a part of the review, as witnesses and in the compilation of the report.

RESOLVED that the panel officially sign-off their report for submission to Cabinet on 5 February subject to the amendment agreed at this meeting.