Agenda item

Joint Report of the Head of Internal Audit and Director of Adult Social Care (DASS) on the 2022/23 Fundamental Financial Systems Audit Outcomes and Action Plan in respect of Direct Payments and Community Home Care.

The Committee heard a report from Officers from Adult Social Care. The Community Health and Adults’ Social Care Team directly manages two of the Council’s financial systems. One of these systems is the Personal Budgets / Direct Payments system. The Direct Payments and Community Home Care audit and has received an audit opinion of ‘Inadequate’ in each of the eight years from 2014/15 to 2021/22. In light of this the overall opinion for 2022/23 was subsequently downgraded to Weak. The report sets out the agreed actions for the Adult Social Care Service to take forward to address the recommendations made in the latest 2022/23 FFS Audit Report.

The latest 2022/23 FFS review of Direct Payments and Home Care found that systems and controls remained inadequate. Six of the ten recommendation made in 2022/23 have been made in previous audit reports and remained outstanding. Four of these recommendations are high priority recommendations, and two are medium priority.

Significant work has been undertaken by Adult Social Care to respond to the historic system challenges since the audit. There has been joint working between Adult Social Care & Audit to offer support and constructive guidance and create an action plan. The programme of work is undertaken programmed to run continuously throughout the year, to highlight challenges in the system and a system response to remedy this. To fully address the auditing recommendations, in October 2022 the service undertook an exercise to restructure and repurpose its portfolios. The restructure of the service aligned the brokerage service within the commissioning portfolio, re-aligned the Client Finance Service and created a portfolio of Reform and Improvement.

Since July 2022, the service has devised a complete system transformation and improvement plan, aligned to Adult Social Care improvement which is expected to support the service to become more efficient and effective in managing demand and meeting the needs of vulnerable residents, who have been assessed as having care and support needs. In addition, the service has devised a new target operating model. The directorate continues to review its brokerage service, which is responsible for overseeing cashflow and that timely payments are made to providers. This has seen the realignment of CHC recharges to be managed within Brokerage to enable a more streamlined approach, reducing handovers and minimising delays. The service is also undertaking a redesign of the Mosaic system, ensuring workflows between frontline operational staff and the Brokerage and Client Finance teams are aligned.

The Committee reviewed the action plan provided which indicated where work had been done and recommendations implemented, and progress made. The Chair questioned whether progress had been made on issues around workforce as this was highlighted as a key issue in previous Audit Committee Meetings. Officers advised that they continue to struggle with recruiting qualified staff but noted that staff surveys indicated improved wellbeing across the workforce- although they continue to be fatigued. Members asked if officers were able to provide some figured and detail on exactly what has been resolved, officers are confident that the work they have done to implement recommendations is strong, and they will be able to evidence the improvements with the results of the next audit.

Resolved:

That the Audit Committee acknowledge the progress and continued action.