The Government is being urged to create a ‘super audit agency’ by merging the Audit Commission and National Audit Office. The New Local Government Network, which is making the call, says that as councils are facing fewer targets and with the alignment of performance indicators, the time is right for there to be a single body for local government inspection.
Read more on GOVERNMENT URGED TO CREATE SINGLE ‘SUPER AUDIT AGENCY’…
The number of parish or town councils gaining Quality Status has now reached 500 since it was launched in June 2003, following the Government’s Rural White Paper. The National Association of Local Councils has congratulated Church Stretton Town Council from Shropshire as the latest to achieve the benchmark.
By Peter Kemp, Annie Irvine and Katharine Nice.
The Government plans to pay the new Local House Benefit to tenants rather than to landlords as currently. The change is designed to promote personal responsibility and empower tenants to budget for themselves, to help workless tenants to develop the skills they will need when they move into paid work and to encourage them to open bank accounts and pay their rent by standing order. The authors found that there are other undesigned outcomes just below the surface.
Read more on THE PITFALLS OF PAYING HOUSING BENEFIT TO CLAIMANTS…
Standards of social services care provided to adults by local councils have shown an overall improvement for the fifth successive year. Performance ratings published today by the Commission for Social Care Inspection show a third of councils have been awarded three stars and for the second year running there are no authorities failing to gain at least a single star.
The Commission says those councils that have improved this year had demonstrated a greater focus on outcomes for people, including good intermediate care, avoiding the need for hospital admissions, as well as improving support for carers, and homecare services.
“Performance Ratings for Adult Social Services in England 2007” shows 24 councils improved their star ratings but 15 saw their rating slip. Nine authorities have improved to achieve the top three-star rating but five that were in that bracket last year have dropped to two stars. Overall, 28 councils have a single star, 74 have two stars and 48 – 32 per cent of the total – are in the highest category.
CSCI Chief Inspector Paul Snell said, “The councils serving people well aren’t just providing good social care services, they are constantly raising their game and aiming high to continually improve, and provide the best possible services for local people.”
The report shows the biggest improvements in the movement of councils from one to two star status. Of the 15 authorities that achieved that, nine had last year been deemed by the CSCI to be ‘priority for improvement councils’. The Commission says the nine had improved their service provision, demonstrated a focused commitment of resources to areas of concern, improved their financial management, strengthened leadership and partnership working and had improved their planning, commissioning and management processes.
Paul Snell said, “CSCI will focus particular attention on the remaining twelve ‘priority for improvement’ councils in the next year, all of which will need to urgently consider how they can better serve local people.”
Read more on INSPECTORS FIND ADULT CARE SERVICES CONTINUING TO IMPROVE…
Local authorities have defended their role in providing services to tackle domestic violence after calls from the new Equality and Human Rights Commission for a huge increase in help for victims. The Local Government Association called, though, for specialist courts to tackle the offences.
Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission said there was a burgeoning crisis of domestic violence against women that needed to be addressed. The Commission found three million women a year were assualted by husbands, boyfriends or partners.
Responding to the Commission’s calls for more and better support for the women involved, Ann Lucas, the domestic violence spokesperson at the LGA, said councils took their role in reducing domestic violence seriously and were leading the way in putting an end to it. “Everybody has an important part to play if councils, the police, health services and central government are to eradicate the most cowardly of crimes,” Councillor Lucas said.
Read more on COUNCILS ‘PLAYING LEADING ROLE IN ENDING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE’…
The survey of income trends for human resources professionals from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development shows that for the first time in ten years, training professionals earn higher than the average HR salary. The survey also found that one of the main reasons HR professionals working in the public sector experience low levels of engagement is due to bad management.
Parents are so keen to control their children’s futures that they are less likely to leave them to make a decision about when to leave formal education to go to work or take a vocational course than they are to let them make up their own minds on when to become sexually active. The findings come today in a report from the educational foundation, Edge following research into attitudes to ‘academic’ education.
Today’s study shows that only 41 per cent of parents would trust a child to decide when to leave traditional academic education while 46 per cent said they would happily rely on their child’s own judgment in deciding when they should have sex. The research found, however, that in spite of their apparent determination to control their child’s learning choices, only 22 per cent of parents believed they had enough information about the education options open to their children and a third of parents said they were unable to speak freely with their children about their education and ambitions.
The gap in understanding between parents’ and children’s values was further highlighted over career choices. Twenty-one per cent wanted their children to become lawyers, almost as many opted for them to become doctors and 18 per cent would like their children to be scientists. Parents acknowledged, however, that their children would prefer jobs in web design, fashion or entrepreneurship.
Garry Hawkes, the chairman of Edge, said, “Parents are now so keen to ensure their child goes down a traditional academic route that they are ignoring the practical and vocational options which their child may prefer. Our research points to a worrying communication breakdown where parents and teenagers are not openly discussing all the educational and life choices available.”
Read more on STUDY FINDS PARENTS NEED MORE INFORMATION ON EDUCATION OPTIONS…
Plans for a single national database containing the personal details of every child in the country are being delayed so a review of its security can be carried out and changes made to the system. The Children’s Minister, Kevin Brennan, said the decision had been taken following the loss last week of computer discs containing details of parents and children receiving Child Benefit.
Earlier this year heads of local authority children’s services warned that a number of issues needed to be addressed before the system – ContactPoint – could safely go live. The Association of Directors of Children’s Services said they supported the creation of the database but there were ‘a number of technical and resource challenges which will need to be overcome in the delivery of ContactPoint’.
Mr Brennan said that delay would enable an independent assessment of security procedures to take place as well as giving time to address changes to ContactPoint that potential system users had said they needed. The review will mean the 224 million pound system will be delayed by about five months and will not now come into use until next September or October next year.
The idea of ContactPoint followed the recommendations of the inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie, which highlighted the need to make it easier for the various agencies involved in child protection to co-ordinate their work. It is designed to hold details including a child’s name, address, date of birth and contact details of their parents, school, doctor and and any professionals working with them.
Mr Brennan said the Government had received feedback from children, parents, local councils and professionals on the operation of the database. “Over the last few months we have been considering the substantial stakeholder feedback we have received and looked at the implications that the resulting proposed changes could have on the system,” he said. Only last week, the children’s rights director for England, Roger Morgan, warned that young people had serious concerns about the database and
feared paedophiles would spent time and effort trying to access information from it.
This programme is now available to view on egovtv.tv, the online television channel for public service modernisation. It presents a case study of the London Borough of Waltham Forest’s strategy of flexible working and accommodation rationalisation, that is delivering annual savings of over 11 million pounds. In the last three years the council has improved service and value to the citizens by improving staff productivity and working conditions and consolidating the Councils’ property portfolio.
Read more on SAVINGS WITH ACCOMMODATION AND FLEXIBLE WORKING…
The heads of social services have welcomed a report today from the Alzheimer’s Society and say many of its recommendations are achievable. The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services has also said training is essential to ensure all care is brought up to the standards set by the best providers.
The Alzheimer’s Society study brands much of the care provided for people suffering with dementia as very poor and says a disturbing proportion is ‘absolutely appalling’. It also points to the claims of care staff that there is little specialist training available and too little money to encourage its provision.
Jenny Owen, co-chair of ADASS’s older people’s committee, said many of the recommendations inn the Society’s report were reasonable, doable and if they were implemented they would dramatically improve the quality of life for many elderly people and their carers. She said it was as important as it was gratifying to see attention being focused on the growing numbers of people with Alzheimer’s and the challenges that posed for older people, their carers and for residential, home care and extra care housing services.
“We must remember that the quality of some residential care is very high, as the Society’s report recognises. Our efforts must, though, be aimed at getting all our services up to that same high quality by concentrating as much of our energies as we can on training, training, training. We fully accept the Society’s recommendation that we should commission for quality services.”
Staff caring for people with dementia needed access, she said, to highly skilled specialist advice and support. The ADASS has made its views, which were similar to those of the Alzheimer’s Society’s, clear to Lord Darzi’s inquiry into the NHS and Directors were also contributing substantially to the National Dementia Strategy, which is due to report next Autumn.
“It is recognised and broadly accepted that recent resource settlements for adult social services have not made rising to these challenges any easier. At the same time there is no excuse for us nationally not looking at more efficient ways of how we can use all the resources available to us within the health and social care system in order to help improve the quality of life for so many older, and not so older, people,” Jenny Owen added
Read more on SERVICE HEADS SHARE CONCERNS OVER DEMENTIA CARE…
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