Agenda item

The Committee received a report of the Chief Executive which provided an overview of progress towards achieving the strategic ambitions and objectives set out in out 2024-28 council plan to members, senior managers, employees, and the public. The report covered the most recent performance data available on 30 June 2024 alongside contextual information of activity and events taking place in the first quarter of the 2024/25 financial year (for copy of report, see file of minutes).

Matthew Peart, Strategy Team Leader was in attendance to present the report and highlighted the main areas contained within the report.

Councillor Jopling referred to access to drug and alcohol treatment and that there was a large unmet need and asked how they could deal with this. She considered that better than national performance standards was not relevant if there was still a large proportion of people who could not get to the service. She asked if there was an outreach programme to bring people in and help with their addiction.

The Strategy Team Leader responded that there was a 76% unmet need within County Durham and the national figure was 79%. In terms of referrals to the service they relied on self-referral, colleagues, friends and family or professionals.

Councillor Jopling indicated that the problem leads to mental health issues and the large numbers of unmet need were worrying.

Councillor Crute indicated that alcohol abuse was spiralling out of control and asked what intervention was taken place to prevent it happening in the first place. He then asked about bench marking data for adult social care workers and asked why they did not have this data for adult social care workers as this data was provided to Children and Young People’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee for social care workers for children.

The Strategy Team Leader responded that alcohol harm was one of the priorities within the Joint Local Health and Wellbeing Strategy as was mental health. The County Durham Drug and Alcohol Recovery Service use a team around the family approach, but this was when people were referred into the system. He could not speak on what was being done to promote these services and increase referrals but would contact someone from the service to answer the question.

Councillor Crute asked that this be looked at closer as it was not just about preventing young people getting involved it was also a pressure factor that works both ways. He stated that Children and Young People’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee also needed to be a part of this work.

The Principal Overview and Scrutiny Officer indicated that drug and alcohol recovery service was reported in terms of performance as part of an annual report that was taken to the Safer and Stronger Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee. He would find out when this was to be considered and circulate the date to members of the Adults, Wellbeing and Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee so that they could attend the meeting when it was to be considered. In terms of alcohol harm, the Health and Wellbeing Board met early September and as part of their agenda considered a reducing alcohol harm blueprint that had been produced by Balance. A number of areas of suggested work was included in the report that he would share with Members of the Committee and have a conversation with the Director of Public Health to see what they could bring to Committee.

The Strategy Team Leader indicated that caseloads were not part of any statutory data return for adults but was for children. There had been a regional attempt to produce a regional benchmarking tool but due to all the different operating systems among local authorities a comparison was not possible. In terms of tracking individual caseloads, they do provide senior management with a weekly situation report which measured the number of caseloads across the front-line teams and tracked against the high case threshold. They had not seen much of a change in the caseloads over the last few years and increased pressures were down to the complexity of cases.

Councillor Crute responded that it was good to know that there were internal mechanisms in place around caseloads but would like to see some data around this brought to this committee.

Councillor Earley referred to the undertake up of direct payments and asked for a regional and national comparison.

The Strategy Team Leader responded that Durham was around 15%, regionally it was 20% and nationally 25%. He continued that the data source had now changed, and nothing had been calculated nationally which was why there was no benchmarking. Direct payments would be included in the December outcomes framework that would include both methodologies and would be included in the Quarter three performance report.

Resolved: That the overall position and direction of travel in relation to quarter one performance (April to June), and the actions being taken to address areas of challenge be noted.