Agenda item

Chrissy Wright, Director of Commissioning and Partnerships presented the submitted report in respect of the PDSI Commissioning Strategy.

She reported that the strategy provides a framework for the strategic commissioning for people with physical and/or sensory disabilities in Rotherham for the next 3 years from 2010-2013.

The overall strategic direction was to move towards self directed support and helping people to help themselves.  This approach would achieve efficiencies through decommissioning and recommissioning services including shifting from traditional service provision.

The strategy provides a framework for the actions needed to achieve change and the action plan outlines the 3 year strategic commissioning intentions.  There would be an annual implementation plan with detailed costings to support decision making on the decommissioning and recommissioning of services.

The report set out the details of the strategic intentions for the PDSI service and included comments made by people with physical and/or sensory disabilities about what they wanted and how their needs and aspirations could be met.

Formal consultation had taken place with customers and their carers utilising the nationally recognised CSED ‘Anticipating Future Needs Toolkit and included face to face interviews.  A process analysis followed this process and provided valuable insight into the lives, aspirations and expectations of individuals.

Building on this approach the Service Quality team have utilised the customer experiences of mystery shopping, reality checking and auditing access to services/information to learn from customer experiences and improve services and outcomes.

The work of customer inspectors was ongoing and the outcomes of their audits were critical and central to the development of services and improvement of existing service provision.  Learning from complaints, surveys and the Fairs Fayre events had also been incorporated into the strategy.

The strategy had been widely shared within NAS, and all comments and amendments had been included and the strategic approach had the support of senior officers.

It was noted that, an action plan had been produced in order to achieve the change required, and this was attached to the strategy as Appendix 1.

Reference was made to strategic intentions for the PDSI service based on what people had told us they wanted.  It was felt that more emphasis should be placed on what a person needed rather than what they wanted.  It was confirmed that, this would be established as part of the assessment of need, and at that point it would be agreed what method could be used to best achieve it.

The Cabinet Member questioned how work with the BME community would integrate into the strategy.  It was confirmed that work was ongoing with the BME community through the Joint Improvement Partnership and that this would feed into the strategy.  The strategy was a living document which would continually change and reshape services provided.

Reference was made to the provision of day care and concerns were raised at the reduction in the number of people attending day care centres.  The Director of Health and Wellbeing commented that more people were opting for being supported to undertake activities on their own rather than attending day care centres.

Resolved:- That the Cabinet Member for Adult Independence Health and Wellbeing approve the draft strategy and agree that performance against the action plan be reported by exception via the DLT performance reporting framework.