The report of the Director of Social Services is enclosed.

Consideration was given to the report of the Director of Adult Social Services, concerning an overview of progress made by Manchester Local Care Organisation (MLCO) against agreed winter planning priorities. The Deputy Director of Adult Social Services and the Chief Executive (Manchester Local Care Organisation) also addressed the Board on the report.

The report set out the progress that MLCO had made in delivering against agreed winter planning priorities to support the people of Manchester to receive the right care and support, in the right place and in a timely manner.

The priorities were as follows:

•           Establishment of a Control Room;

•           Fully mobilise integrated discharge arrangements/teams;

•           Roll out of discharge to assess;

•           Market stabilisation; and,

•           Data driven decision making.

The report also detailed how the partnership approach brought together key health and social care resources and included commissioners, primary care, mental health providers and acute providers. The paper described the work that had been, and continues to be undertaken in conjunction with the three hospital sites in Manchester: Manchester Royal Infirmary; Wythenshawe; and North Manchester General Hospital.

The Director of Adult Social Services referred to work that had been done on Homelessness and those affected. It was reported that eight posts had been established to help support homeless people in hospital and ten temporary properties had been secured on Dalbeattie Street to enable permanent accommodation to be arranged. This arrangement had helped with avoiding hospital admissions for vulnerable service users with medical care needs.

The Chair commented that taking purely clinical approaches to certain issues is not always the best use of available health services and stated that over 80% of solutions to health improvement are non-clinical and with regard to homelessness it is both a cause of poor health and also a consequence of poor health and should be viewed in that context.

Board Members asked officers what the rate of discharge and readmission had been over the Christmas period. The comment was also made that it is important for an interim local approach for discharge arrangements with care providers to be in place in view of the Primary Care Network service consultation and the likely time to be taken for a national response to be made.

It was reported that figures on hospital discharge and readmissions were not yet available but will be circulated to Board Members. It was reported that the arrangements for discharge had been referenced in the report and an assurance was given that work is ongoing for an agreed set of standards for discharge arrangements.

A Board Member reported that Healthwatch had monitored the issue of inability of emailing patient records to care homes for the reason that there was no NHS email address and raised that this was still ongoing across the city. An assurance had been given that the issue would be addressed at the start of the year and would be monitored later in the year. The Director of Adult Social Services undertook to look into the matter.

Decision

To note the report.