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), Mary Anson (CPIC Chair), representatives from the CPIC Committee, and occasionally colleagues from the Council.

Daily update - 28th January 2022

The meeting today included Jonathan Price, Val Smith, and Kate Alcock, along with Mary, Phil, Christine, and Richard from CPIC. We discussed; 

• The Council are looking into what support they can offer to help with accommodation for staff that want to move to Cornwall to work in the social care sector. HMRC offer tax free options for relocation packages, up to £8.5k. This could be a really useful incentive, however this will not necessarily address the issue around the lack of available housing opportunities.
• One staffing agency has been offering discounted rates to the NHS and it was suggested that this could be explored to see if they would offer the same discount to social care.
• Kate discussed the thinking regarding fee uplifts from April 2022.
• Kate is working on a paper, which Jonathan Price and Steve Peddie are currently reviewing. A proposal has been put forward, however this will need to be discussed further and ratified by cabinet before any final figure can be announced. This will likely happen towards the end of February.
• It was noted that around 50% of Care Home providers have signed the current contract. Kate asked what the reasons are for providers not signing. The equipment policy was raised as one issue, however Kate indicated that this policy applied to all providers whether they sign the contract or not.
• A discussion took place around the need to uplift Direct Payments as there are some options around using grants to see how these could be used to best effect.
• Handbacks of packages are no longer the issue they were at their peak before Christmas, however the system is still catching up with itself.
• An issue around the aggressive nature of some Bed Bureau staff who were forcing discharges into care homes without their knowledge or consent. The Bed Bureau team has recently grown with new and seconded staff so there may be a training and communication issue that needs addressing. Tim Mumford of the Bed Bureau has been made aware of the situation.
• Vaccination status for Home Care is difficult to judge as the tracker has only been working intermittently of late.
• A new cell for adult social care and health around housing has been set up and will need some sector representation.
• Jonathan offered to look into the new community cell to find out what it will do and who is on it.
• Care Homes are awaiting guidance on the new visiting rules following recent media releases.
• The question around testing before shifts was raised, especially for home care staff. Is it once per shift or once per day or once per visit (as some visits can have large gaps between)? Val offered to setup a discussion with Phil and Ruth Goldstein to look into this.
• Home care providers are keen to be able to identify where there is demand for packages so that they can target their recruitment activities to those areas. This will help ensure any recruitment budget is spent effectively and help ensure capacity is available where it is most needed.
• A discussion took place about patients that have been placed in care homes under the discharge to assess model and where no follow up assessments have been done, as they people appear to have been abandoned. Kate offered to look into this.
• The Council may have the capacity to purchase Care Friends for all social care staff across Cornwall. Richard to arrange a meeting with Neil Eastwood of Care Friends for an update on how the system has developed since it was first launched.
• It was suggested that the meeting be extended to 90 minutes so ensure there is enough time to discuss everything.

The next scheduled meeting will take place on the 4^th February 2022.