Cornwall Partners in Care News

Cornwall Partners in Care hold weekly briefings with Cornwall Council and Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation trust. These meetings involve Jonathan Price (Joint Director Adult Care and Health for Cornwall Council and NHS Kernow) and Phil Confue (Chief Executive of Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation trust), as well as David Smith (CPIC Chairman) and representatives from the CPIC Committee.

Daily update - 26th March 2021
The usual crowd met today with Claire standing in for Val. It was Derek Hoddinott's last Friday meeting with us. We discussed the following:

1/ Treliske escalation had highlighted practical difficulties in discharging people, in particular communication with wards to obtain assessment information. Mary and David were asked to write up the difficulties encountered which act as a barrier to timely discharge. Medication shortfalls were identified as a major issue which meant Providers were less inclined to take people on Fridays or at weekends.
Jonathon stated that Embrace were scheduled to undertake work on discharge arrangements which would now be re prioritised. He also stated that Louisa Forbes was now reporting directly to the Chief Nurse at Treliske, and the plan was for multi disciplinary teams to plan and coordinate discharges,which could ultimately incorporate Trusted Assessors. The ASC QA Team will also monitor arrangements.

2/ Discharge shortfalls were often made into safeguard alerts but quite often were triaged out so Providers were now less likely to make the referrals. Jonathon stated that there was no joined up approach on this and agreed to follow this up.It was felt that different moving parts were not connected up on discharge, and that the Safeguarding Board could be the conduit to consider these issues.

3/ Jonathon stated that Stuart Smith would no longer be Chairing the Care Home Cell meetings due to workload pressures, and that he would be Chairing it in the interim. Longer term it was the intention to rotate 3 locality based Clinical Directors as Chairs. Jonathon also explained his desire to include Care at Home representation by widening the scope of the cell to include Christine and Phil.

4/ Derek summarised progress on improving processes to improve matching and reduce levels of rejection. Measures are being introduced at ward level to reinforce the Cornwall offer and to provide key messages on charging arrangements. Christine suggested that this should include takeaway material so that families are aware..Derek explained that the new streamlined arrangements were to reduce the number of failed packages, and that this would become a KPI. There was now greater delegation with Provider Led Reviews and that Locality Managers were continuing with capacity optimisation and mapping functionality.

5/ Many of the projects outlined above would be handed over to Sarah Scoltock, and that at future Friday meetings Kate Alcock and/or Amy Claridge would be present to consider and discuss future strategic commissioning issues. However, initiatives started by Derek will be continued by Locality Commissioning Managers , and Locality Provider Forums will be the way forward. Progress with Provider Led Reviews was acknowledged, with future inclusion of Care Homes to be considered. It was noted that the brokerage and bed bureau function was currently being managed by Dylan Champion who is covering Liz Nicholls. This post will eventually be advertised when Liz retires.

6/ It was noted that since 2018, the Homecare market had developed 30% additional capacity and that 700 unmet packages had been reduced to 350 (Jonathon clarified that unmet packages equates to people receiving the wrong service) Dereks' contributions in achieving this turnaround was acknowledged.

That's it for now. The next Friday meeting will take place after Easter on the 9th April. Have a good weekend.