Head of Social Care - CommunityCandidate PackFebruary 2019

Contents

Welcome from the Director of Adult Services

Political composition of the county council

Management structure chart

Job description

Person specification

Terms of employment and employee benefits

How to apply

Recruitment timetable

Candidate Pack

Welcome from the Director of Adult Services

Introduction

Firstly, many thanks for your interest in these posts and taking time to read all of the information in the pack.

These two new senior posts of Head of Social Care – Community are being established to provide additional leadership and management capacity for Adult Social Care within the County Council at an important but challenging time for public services in Lancashire.

Lancashire County Council is the fourth largest local authority in England, and the largest in the North West. It has a scale of statutory responsibilities, a diversity of services and a level of aggregate expenditure commensurate with that position. It serves a population of over 1.2 million people living in a mix of cities, towns, villages and remote rural communities, across 12 district councils.

Adult Social Care is of course one of the council’s most important functions. This is reflected in its level of annual spending. For example in 2018/19 adult social care gross expenditure is budgeted to be £550m, and net expenditure is £345m. Currently we are on target this year to deliver our services within those budgets.

The Council directly employs over 3000 people in frontline or other adult social care related posts. This includes a significant portfolio of 17 residential care homes and 13 day time support services for older people, making the Council itself the largest single provider of such services in the county, although this is still only 5% of the total residential care market for older people. There are also a significant range of in-house day services, supported living services and short break services for adults with a disability, and a hugely successful Shared Lives service.

Across Lancashire as a whole there are at least another 30,000 people employed in adult social care roles, working for independent sector providers in one of approximately 500 residential care homes, and over 100 community care organisations. Some of the bigger national providers do operate in Lancashire, but the majority of services are delivered by relatively small local or regional care sector businesses.

However what is most important of all is the significant number of Lancashire citizens who will be offered information, advice, assessment and support by these services each year. Each individual expects a high quality, safe and compassionate response from our customer access, assessment, in-house and commissioned services. These Head of Service roles will play a vital role in ensuring standards are set accordingly and consistently achieved in all this work with the citizens of Lancashire.

Undoubtedly these posts offer a great opportunity for experienced professionals with energy and ambition. To succeed in the roles candidates will have significant experience of developing and implementing best practice in accordance with the

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Candidate Pack

Care Act, and indeed of ensuring compliance with all key legislative and regulatory requirements.

It is also a role for which you will need to fully utilise your leadership skills and have the confidence to operate in a dynamic and complex multiagency environment. This means you must also have a sound understanding of the national strategic context for health and social care, reflecting the requirements of the recently published NHS Long Term Plan and anticipating the direction that may be set by the forthcoming Adult Social Care Green Paper.

Achievements

Adult Social Care has achieved a great deal over the last 2 to 3 years

Successful design and implementation of a new operating model for adult social care for older people and adults with a physical disability. This programme known as 'Passport to Independence' was supported by a leading consultancy 'Newton Europe' and has driven wide ranging and sustainable improvements in social work and occupational therapy services operating in the community, hospital, and through our reablement offer. It has increased productivity and so cut assessment waiting times, improved outcomes for individuals and is on its way to delivery of savings of over £25 million per year. Its success has resulted in it being shortlisted for an LGC Award in the category of 'Business Transformation'.

Telecare has become an integral and highly effective component of the support arrangements of over 10,000 people per year. Concurrent studies by academic institutions are occurring to help us better understand the experience of people receiving the service, the impact it may have on avoiding admissions into residential care for older people with dementia, and the savings that may arise for social care and health from its effective deployment at scale. This year the service won the LaingBuisson Award in the category of Best 'Public – Private Partnership'.

Home First is being implemented to improve the flow of people ready for safe discharge from hospital. It is particularly well embedded in Pennine Lancashire where its success has led to its shortlisting for awards by both the Local Government Chronicle and the Health Service Journal.

There has been steady and significant improvement across Lancashire in the quality of registered care services as indicated by CQC judgements. This includes improvements in care homes which shows the proportion of 'Good' or 'Outstanding' homes in Lancashire is now clearly above the national average, and significantly above the NW average. Our registered community care services (eg home care) agencies are similarly consistently highly rated across the whole of the county.

The Council has been successful in securing a competitively awarded grant for pioneering the development of 'Digital Discharge' arrangements between

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ourselves and Lancashire Teaching Hospital. This is well on its way to implementation but its true significance is that it also marks out a path for the much more wide ranging integration of information systems between adult social care and NHS.

The Council began the recommissioning of all Home Care Services just over 3 years ago, and within the next few weeks we will have completed the successful mobilisation. It has not been without its moments of difficulty during the commissioning, procurement and mobilisation phases. But the strategic purpose of the work has been broadly achieved, operationally the services are working better and are more robust, affordable and sustainable than before

Performance on delayed transfers of care has improved significantly over the last 18 months. Working with 5 Acute Hospital Trusts and a major Mental Health Trust, the challenge of delivery against nationally set DToC targets has been significant. But by close partnership working with our NHS colleagues and investment from the Better Care Fund and its successor the improved Better Care Fund, the Council is now consistently meetings its BCF target even in the face of rising demand.

More generally ASCOFF, BCF and other Performance indicators show that the County Council's Adult Social Care services are operating at above NW and England averages in the overwhelming majority of key areas this year and last.

A renewed County Council commitment to adult social care in the form of the document 'Care, Support and Wellbeing of Adults in Lancashire – Our Vision' has been approved by Cabinet in late 2018, and this anticipates and addresses many of the key policy, quality assurance and demographic pressures facing the Council and the NHS in the coming years. This is provided alongside the rest of this pack.

Challenges Ahead

Of course all public services face challenges, and there are a number of general and specific issues facing the County Council's adult social care services.

Performance in some areas needs to significantly improve. For example, there are still too many people placed in residential or nursing homes, and our performance compares poorly with that of many other councils. The position is much better than four or five years ago, but we want to improve further.

The Council's initial interventions also converts a greater proportion of requests for help at the 'Front Door' into long term service offers for people compared to other councils. This suggests that we are not getting our initial offers of information or short term support right for as many people as we would like. This places pressures on our workforce capacity and on our budgets.

The County Council as a whole faces major financial challenges, with a need to contain and reduce expenditure over the next 4 years to ensure its sustainability.

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This resulted in a wide ranging process during 2018 /19 of 'Service Challenges'. Adult Social Care's share of the savings over the next 4 years is £42m, and there are clear but demanding projects that will require leadership and commitment at many levels if they are to be delivered successfully. Item 4 on the December 2018 Cabinet agenda contains the overall context - see http://council.lancashire.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?MId=7455 . Appendices C and D contains the details of all savings including those within Adult Social Care and Health

There is a clear national expectation and a local political commitment for closer integration between Health and Social Care. In Lancashire this poses some complex questions for how we organise ourselves strategically and operationally. The County Council is a partner within the Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care System (ICS), which is setting the strategic direction for the 8 Clinical Commissioning Groups, the 5 Acute Hospital Trusts, the Mental Health Trust, and the 4 upper tier local authorities to come together to deliver better health and social care services across health and social care system. At a more local level the five Integrated Commissioning Partnerships - ICPs (Pennine, West Lancashire, Fylde Coast, Greater Preston, Chorley and South Ribble, and Bay) are all at critical stages of their development. They have laid down the foundations for working together but are now wishing to press on with more substantive changes to deliver on the ambition and aspirations of local people, organisations and staff for better outcomes and service quality. Ensuring the County Council's responsibilities are fulfilled within that context will be a considerable organisational and political challenge, but also a fantastic opportunity to deliver sustainable improvements.

Workforce capacity is an increasing concern in some parts of the county and within some specific sectors. This is most obvious in the recruitment and retention figures for adult social care services (see the Skills for Care website for more evidence). However it reflects a wider problem of demography, wage levels, social care's profile and competition labour market, not just in Lancashire but across England as a whole. How we respond to that challenge in the future is going to be a significant test for all other sustainability and improvement plans for Health and Social Care. To assist with Council social worker recruitment we have recently formed a Social Care Academy and a Greater Lancashire Teaching Partnership.

Purpose and Scope

The organisational structure of both the County Council and of Adult Social Care is shown on the structure charts provided alongside this pack.

These two new posts of Head of Social Care – Community will provide additional management capacity and leadership at a vital time. They will need to build on the achievements outlined above, and also work with colleagues across the Council and Health to address the challenges ahead. They will specifically focus on the assessment and delivery of services for Older People and People with a Physical Disability.

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Candidate Pack

The current arrangement means two postholders - the Head of Social Care – Community and the Head of Social Care – Health covers these responsibilities for the whole county. This however does not allow for the fullest and most effective County Council adult social care involvement in all of the 5 local ICPs. It also means that the weight of responsibility for maintaining good performance and delivering on the Service Challenges rests on too few senior leaders and managers.

These new posts provide an opportunity to share the responsibilities differently and ensure there is highly visible and local senior leadership throughout the county.

The full and precise configuration of responsibilities will be determined and developed after appointment, but as a starting point the new post-holders will be allocated an area of the County where they will be the Head of Social Care - Community. The three areas will be

East Lancashire – linking with Pennine ICP

Central Lancashire –linking with both the West Lancashire ICP and the Greater Preston, Chorley and South Ribble ICP

North Lancashire – linking with both the Fylde Coast ICP and Bay (Lancaster and South Cumbria) ICP

This will mean taking management responsibility for a number of social care teams within those areas, providing leadership visibility to adult social care staff and services both within the county council and across the independent sector. It will certainly mean ensuring strong financial and performance management is in place.

However many aspects and areas of adult social care also need a countywide perspective. This is the case with regard to the Service Challenges and you will be expected to provide leadership across one of more areas of delivery.

Finding out more

I am happy to talk directly with you if you wish to know more about the job, the services or working for Lancashire County Council, and you can make an appointment to call me via my PA Jackie McCann on Jackie.mccann@lancashire.gov.uk or on 01772 538841.

Good luck with your application!

Tony PounderDirector of Adult Services

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Candidate Pack

Political composition of the county council

Our corporate governance structure consists of a leader, a cabinet and an overview and scrutiny function.

The full council, which sets the budget and council tax levels and approves the council’s policy framework, consists of 84 county councillors. Full council appoints the leader, who then appoints cabinet members. The cabinet, chaired by the leader of the county council, implements policy and runs county services. Individual cabinet members have been given specific areas of responsibility, but all decisions are taken collectively by cabinet.

The current political composition of seats on the council is:

Conservative 45 Labour 30 Liberal Democrat 4 Independent 3 Non-aligned 1 UKIP 1

The current administration has been Conservative led since May 2017. The next county council elections will be held in May 2021.

District and parish councils

The Lancashire County Council administrative area has 12 district councils and over 200 parish and town councils.

The districts are:

Burnley Borough CouncilChorley Borough CouncilFylde Borough CouncilHyndburn Borough CouncilLancaster City CouncilPendle Borough CouncilPreston City CouncilRibble Valley Borough CouncilRossendale Borough CouncilSouth Ribble Borough CouncilWest Lancashire Borough CouncilWyre Borough Council

The County of Lancashire also includes two unitary authorities i.e. Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen.

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Parliamentary seats

The County of Lancashire has 16 members of parliamentROSSENDALE & DARWEN Jake Berry MP (Conservative)WEST LANCASHIRE Rosie Cooper MP (Labour)FYLDE Mark Menzies MP (Conservative)PRESTON Mark Hendrick MP (Labour)RIBBLE VALLEY Nigel Evans MP (Conservative)SOUTH RIBBLE Seema Kennedy MP (Conservative)CHORLEY Lindsay Hoyle MP (Labour)WYRE & PRESTON NORTH Ben Wallace MP (Conservative)MORECAMBE & LUNESDALE David Morris MP (Conservative)LANCASTER & FLEETWOOD Cat Smith MP (Labour)PENDLE Andrew Stephenson MP (Conservative)HYNDBURN Graham Jones MP (Labour)BLACKPOOL NORTH & CLEVELEYS Paul Maynard MP (Conservative)BURNLEY Julie Cooper MP (Labour)BLACKBURN Kate Hollern MP (Labour)BLACKPOOL SOUTH Gordon Marsden MP (Labour)

Europe

Lancashire is in the European constituency of the north-west region, which currently returns eight members to the European Parliament 'pre – Brexit'.

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Candidate Pack

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