Has your local authority established a forum for care recipients and their families to come together to influence the design and commissioning of adult social care services in your area?
Devon County Council has established numerous forums to enable care recipients and their families to come together to influence the design and commissioning of care services in our area. Some of these are standing forums but most are time-limited groups meeting about specific issues, such as:
- The Joint Engagement Board (quarterly meeting to help determine and oversee engagement practice);
- Commissioning Involvement Group (monthly meeting for service users to influence the commissioning cycle and tendering);
- Re-visioning Social Care Group (monthly meeting for services users to influence strategic direction and care management process);
- Autism Task Group (monthly meeting to influence Autism strategy implementation).
- Along with these, we also have service users sitting on Board such as the Learning Disability Partnership Board, and the Autism Partnership Board.
If yes, how many times has the local authority forum for care recipients met since Jan 2014, and how many care recipients and family members attended each meeting?
There is a regular quarterly forum and at least two monthly groups, plus other groups when issues arise – and for the first year of Care Act implementation we also had a monthly Care Act Service User & Carer Reference Group. Numbers of care recipients and family members attending our engagement forums depend on the forum and subject matter: the Joint Engagement Board has twelve service user and carer members, the Commissioning Involvement Group has ten, the Autism Task Group 8 and there were twelve members of the Care Act Service User & Carer Reference Group.
Has your local authority established a forum for frontline care workers to come together to influence the design and commissioning of adult social care services in your area?
We have a monthly Staff Reference Group at which frontline staff discuss change issues.
If yes, how many times has the local authority forum for frontline care workers met since Jan 2014, and how many frontline care workers attended each meeting?
The Staff Reference Group meets monthly and has met virtually every month since Jan 2014.The number of frontline staff attending each session varies between twenty and thirty depending on operational requirements.
Has your local authority established a forum for informal carers to come together to influence the design and commissioning of adult social care services in your area?
We fund a local a voluntary sector organisation to host the Devon Carers Voice network of carers and are part of the national Carers Ambassador scheme with Carer Ambassadors sitting on our Carers Strategy Delivery Board.
If yes, how many times has the local authority forum for informal carers workers met since January 2014 and how many informal carers attended each meeting?
Formal Devon Carers Voice forums happen four times a year supplemented by online communication.
If you have established any such forums, what is the annual expense and budgetary implications?
Our overall spending on supporting service user and carer engagement and involvement is around £151,000 a year.
If you use any other methods of co-production within adult social care commissioning to fulfil the statutory guidance quoted above, please list them.
We also involve service users and carers directly in the tendering process when practical and relevant (some tenders are too technical for this), in ‘mystery shopping’ activities to help monitor services and have encouraged service users and carers to join and work with HealthWatch Devon, the statutory consumer voice organisation.