Sorry for the lack of posts this week but I've been mostly occupied with scrutiny.
A few weeks ago I blogged about Reading Borough Council's disappointing one star rating for it's Adult Community Care service.
On Tuesday I Chaired a meeting of the Housing, Health and Community Care Scrutiny Panel and we discussed the results of the inspection. I raised the issue of delayed discharges which had increased over the past year and made the general point that according to CSCI, one star councils need to improve in all areas to be able to deliver a good service to residents.
Other members of the Panel also expressed concerns at the lack of progress in key areas.
I made it clear when I introduced the report that since RBC had once again been awarded one out of a possible three stars it was not going to be acceptable for the Panel simply to to pat officers on the back when there were quite clearly a lot of improvement needed toget RBC to the level of service offered by local authorities elsewhere.
I feel strongly that It is not the job of scrutiny simply to to gloss over areas of concern but to help drive improvement of service delivery - it's a vital job as dry as it sounds!
As part of my preparation for the Panel I looked back over the minutes of HHCC Panel for the past two years - they made pretty dispiriting reading. Between 2006 and 2008 RBC has been awarded one star for it's Adult Community Care Service, and yet the Panel simply noted reports.
This was what was in the minutes of the December 2006 meeting:
"That the Community Care one star rating from CSCI for performance during 2005/06, based on services for adults serving some people well with promising prospects for improvement, be noted;"
And at the same meeting in 2007:
"That it be noted that Adult Community Care had achieved a one Star Rating from CSCI for performance during 2006/07 and that prospects for future improvement were judged to be “Promising”;"
Anyway, my Vice-Chair, Cllr Terry Byrne and the rest of the Panel seemed happy with this approach and a form of words that I drafted which I felt reflected concern we felt both as Members and as representatives of the people of Reading. In addition to acknowledging the work done by Council officers, we agreed the following:
"That this panel, however, expresses concern that some of Reading Borough Council's key improvement indicators in Adult Community Care have registered a decline in performance over the period 2006/07 to 2007/08, as set out in the recent CSCI inspection report, and that the overall performance of the authority in this service area is not yet reaching the level of some similar councils;
"That this Scrutiny Panel requests that officers undertake to prepare an update report on and action plan for the March 2009 meeting of the Panel on how the authority working with key partners plans to tackle the weaknesses and highlight obstacles to progress in the Adult Community Care Service as identified in the recent CSCI inspection report."
This may seem like semantics to those reading this blog. However, these subtle changes represent seismic shifts in the poltical culture of Reading Borough Council which before 2008 had remained in a kind of inertia for years. That political culture was of a one-party state.
A lot has changed in Reading since May. Members of the ruling (Labour) group no longer hold the chairs of scrutiny and opposition members are now in a position to hold the Executive to account. It would appear that the different political parties are adjusting to this change at different rates, however, and some are clearly more comfortable with change than others.
I had been a bit worried how officers might react on Tuesday evening. I shouldn't have worried.
"Isn't that how scrutiny is supposed to work?"
said one.
This story is unwritten and we are to an extent finding our way around this new political landscape. However, one thing that is clear is that the opposition parties do not want to see a return to a situation where the Council's scrutiny function simply notes reports and acts as a rubber stamp.
Comments