Responding to calls made today by the Chief Inspector for Care and Social Services in Wales for local authorities to address variation in performance across social services as well as improve in the range and quality of services they deliver, Councillor Meryl Gravell (Carmarthenshire), WLGA Social services Spokesperson said:
“For some time, local authorities have been working collaboratively to cope with growing service and financial pressures. Indeed, there are over 200 collaborative projects underway across Wales whereby local authority social services departments are working closely with one another to exchange good practice and to drive up performance standards by addressing issues of performance variability.
“Over recent months the WLGA has also held several discussions with both ADSS Cymru and the CSSIW over the need for increasing the pace of collaboration and work has started to exchange performance information across both adult and children’s services at a national and local level.”
The WLGA is currently working with the six authorities across the Mid and West Wales region to specifically address variation in performance across children’s services. The project – ‘narrowing the gap’ – is aimed at raising performance standards and closing the variation gap between the six authorities involved by allowing these authorities to exchange key information on how they each deliver their services, find out from one another what works well and how they can learn from one another to improve service provision in the future.
Whilst this project is currently being piloted in mid and West Wales, the intention is that it will form the basis for similar exercises to be undertaken across North Wales, South-East and South-West Wales and with the information and knowledge gained form an all-Wales picture of social services performance and approaches to services delivery.
Whilst today’s report by the CSSIW does address the need for further improvement, it also recognises improvements that have been made over the last year in core areas such as assessments, care management and reviews.
Cllr Meryl Gravell added: “Local authority social services departments continue to work diligently to protect vulnerable adults and children. These improvements are in the face of an unprecedented increase in demand for services and very poor local government settlements. Whilst performance inconsistency is not acceptable, changing practice alone will not be sufficient to improve performance given the growing pressures that social services departments are under and the significant funding black hole that exists. The Welsh Assembly Government, the inspectors and the local authorities themselves will need to be realistic in their targets for improvement as scarce resources is a very serious and realistic threat for future growth and improvement.”
The WLGA’s ‘narrowing the gap’ project is being supported by the Local Government Data Unit in Wales.
For a copy of today’s CSSIW report visit: Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales Annual Report 2008-2009
