Brent Consultation on Adult Social Care opens - reduction in minimum income guarantee and increased charges. Will safeguards be enough?

 

Cllr Neil Nerva, Brent Cabinet Member for Public Health and Adult Social Care

 

Brent Council opened consultation on changes in Adult Social Care charges on Thursday that propose a reduction in the minimum income guarantee support and increased charges for service users.  This will reduce Brent Council spending on Adult Social Care overall. Adult Social Care is the biggest area of Council spending.

 

Attempting to put a positive gloss on the proposals, Councillor Neil Nerva, Cabinet Member for Public Health & Adult Social Care, said:

These proposals for the charging policy are essential to ensure that we can continue to deliver a high-quality Adult Social Care service for years to come. If adopted Brent’s Adult Social Care charging policy would still be one of the most generous in London but it would be more consistent and sustainable for future years.

The Council said:

The proposed changes to the charging policy are essential to ensure the council can continue to provide the Adult Social Care services thousands of residents rely on in a sustainable way for years to come.

The proposals include:

• Changes to the minimum income guarantee – There is a minimum level of income which a person must be left with after charges are taken. This changes according to a person’s circumstances. Currently, Brent tops this up by 25%. It is proposed to reduce this to 10%. This change only affects the half of service users that contribute towards the cost of their homecare and these people will still receive 10% more than the minimum level of income they need to live, which would be one of the most generous schemes in London. The consultation will ask whether this should be implemented in full in April 2024, or phased over time.
• Increasing the amount charged to service users if they do not participate or cooperate with their financial assessment – The vast majority of service users take part in the financial assessment process, but if after four weeks they do not, it is proposed they are charged the full cost of their care. The average care cost will also be raised for financial assessments that take longer than expected to complete. The consultation will ask whether residents agree with this proposal.
• Increasing the hourly rate charged for homecare from £12.97, which will increase annually – This will impact self-funders (people who pay the total cost of their care) and some people on low incomes who have a small care package, however everyone will be re-assessed to ensure they can afford to pay. The consultation will ask what steps the council should take to support those affected.
• Charges during admissions to hospital – Proposals include not reimbursing service users for the cost of their adult social care while they are in hospital, for up to seven days if they receive homecare, or 28 days if they are in a residential or nursing home

 

In only the second proposal are residents given the opportunity to reject it outright. Public consultation meetings will be arranged to discuss the proposals.

 

More information is available on the Consultation website LINK . This includes a Powerpoint presentation from which I have extracted some case studies below:

 

 

The Council seek to reassure service users:

Share your thoughts on the consultation by Sunday 17 December. The council will then review all feedback and present the final proposals to Brent’s Cabinet in January. The earliest that any changes will take effect is April 2024.

Adult Social Care in the firing line as Brent Council seeks £18m cuts/savings and increases Council Tax by 2.99%

With its budget under pressure Brent Council is proposing £18m in 'savings' (which are often actually cuts) and raising Council Tax by 2.99%:

  The key features of the 2023/24 budget are:

· A Council Tax increase of 2.99% (consisting of a 1.99% general increase plus 1% for the Adult Social Care Precept), making a Band D Council Tax of £1,461.96 (for the Brent element). The GLA precept is unknown at this stage and is subject to their own decision making and consultation processes.
· New budget savings proposals of £18m to be delivered in 2023/24

Summary

Adult and Social Care -£4.3m

Children & Young People -£2.4m

Communities and Regeneration -£0.6m

Residents' Services -£4.2m

Finance & Resources  -£1.8m

Governance -£0.4m

Corporate -£4.1m

I have embedded fuller details below and as you read it you will see that it is likely that extensive job losses are likely to be involved, and many of those low paid workers. ethnic minority and women.

Adult Social Care

Adult social care  costs are rising across all councils but it is likely that some of the justifications made for the cuts by Brent Council, under a general argument that they will increase the independence of recipients, will be challenged.  There will be no general public consultation on the changes because of the 'personalised aspects; of the proposal. This limits the opportunity to campaign and narrows implentation to individual negotiations with recipients, family and advocate. The final paragraph on key risks is important.

 Extract from Report

There is some evidence that Brent provides more homecare hours in community care packages than other London boroughs –potentially around 1 hour per week extra per client over the age of 75 than expected.

There are a number of interventions that need to be delivered both in response to the pandemic and because they are good practice, which should reduce the overall levels of homecare. These include:

Double handed care reviews – partly as a result of the pandemic, and the reduced access to care homes for discharge we have seen a significant increase in double handed care packages (where 2 carers are needed to carry out care). Reducingdouble handed care packages, means fewer people entering someone’s home, better use of community equipment and, therefore, more independence and less intrusive care.

Reablement – the new and redesigned dedicated reablement service goes live inFebruary 2023. The new service has been designed after a full review and brings a range of new features, which have been successful in other Local Authorities,therefore, we expect to see a significant increase in the number of people supported to maximise independence and so require lower or no care packages.

High and Low costing care Packages – the purpose of social care is to assist people to live as independent a life as is possible outside the formal care system. For these cohort of service users focused reviews will be undertaken with a stronger attention on Personalisation and promoting Personal Budgets/ Personal Assistants as a means of receiving their services. For very low costing support packagers the aim will be to Promoting Independence. Looking at housing adjustment / equipment’s, telecare and digital solutions to support individual’s so that they will no longer require funded support.

How would this affect users of this service?

We carry out reviews at the end of the reablement process and on an annual basis. We will ensure that these reviews are strength bases reviews and with a focus on independence. This will also be true of double handed calls because although the person will not be full independent with activities of daily living, they may only require a single carer, which should be seen as a positive as it will reduce the number of carers and should improve the relationships.

Key milestones

The nature of this proposal means it will be part of all reviews on an ongoing basis. Individual reviews will be done with the person who receives the care, their family or advocates and the care agency. The only specific milestone is the implementation of the new reablement service in February 2023.

Key consultations

Service users and families will be consulted on a case by case basis – there will not be a wider consultation given the personalised aspect of this proposal.

Key risks and mitigations 

Reducing packages becomes harder to achieve in practice than in principle, because of a reliance on the care provided – social workers use their experience and understanding of the Care Act to promote a strength based approached to care, to mitigate these issues.

Outline of the proposals are below and fuller details are available in a 200 page document available HERE.  

Click bottom right for full page.

 

 

 

 

Brent Council's Adult Social Care teams talk about how they're responding to coronavirus

Brent moves towards paying London Living Wage to care workers but rejects moving to in-house provision

The Community and  Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee will consider a report LINK on September 4th outlining the issues facing the provision of child and adult social care in the borough. The Council wishes to fund private providers sufficiently to pay their workers the London Living Wage, wants them to move away from zero hours contracts (unless workers prefer them) and comply with Unison's Care Charter. To do this they want to introduce a 'patch model' with fewer providers in particular areas so that there is improved performance and better quality relationships with care recipients as well as support some specialist care providers.

The change will be costly with Adult Social Care costing £10million more if the changes are implemented in 2020-21. The report rejects bringing Social Care in-house (the Council running the service) on grounds of viability and risk.

Key extracts from the report:

Paying the London Living Wage

The current cost model allows for providers to pay at or above the National Living Wage, which is £8.21 per hour, but does not enable them to pay London Living Wage, which is £10.55 per hour. Therefore, there are clear cost implications to the Council in paying at London Living Wage levels. 


The Council has a clear commitment to paying LLW where possible, and no one would argue this is not the right thing to do. However, it is worth noting that there is no evidence, locally or nationally, that paying care workers above NLW has any impact on the quality of care. Regardless, discussion at PCG and at CMT has concluded that the Council will offer LLW as part of the new homecare model. The debate therefore is how quickly this can be delivered. 


Within Adult Social Care we have a strong record of price control, although expenditure has increased year on year due to increases in complexity of packages and hours of homecare clients are receiving. However, both the external price analysis and intelligence from our own commissioning function has indicated that Brent now pays one of the lowest hourly rate in North West London. Other boroughs that have re-commissioned services are paying in the region of £18 per hour. The combination of a lack of available home care workers (The Institute of Public Policy Research estimates that nationally the industry will need 400,000 additional carers by 2028) and the fact that Brent is now one of the lowest paying boroughs in NW London have both contributed to the need to review our existing model to ensure the market remains sustainable in the future. 


Ending Zero Hours Contracts 

Currently 38% of care workers in Brent work on zero-hours contracts. To mandate that providers don’t use zero-hours contracts and instead offer minimum-hours contracts would inevitably have an impact on the way that they are able to organise their staff rotas to deliver care. There are peaks in the demand for homecare services. Unsurprisingly they are in the morning, lunchtime and evenings. Providers don’t want to have to pay care workers when they aren’t delivering care; the council doesn’t want to pay providers more than is necessary to deliver quality services. 


Through discussion with providers, we are also clear that the biggest incentive for a reduction in the use of inappropriate zero-hours contracts will be being able to offer providers a guaranteed level of hours and funding. This can be achieved through reducing the number of providers and implementing a patch based model. This would give providers a clear and consistent number of hours to work with so that they can plan their workforce requirements accordingly. The more confident the council can be in guaranteeing hours of work, the easier it will be for providers to plan their rotas and not have to fill in gaps in provision with zero-hours workers. 


However, it is known that in some instances, zero-hours contracts are the preferred option of homecare workers. Our aim is that where workers would prefer a standard contract and a guaranteed minimum number of hours, this is available to them, but that we allow providers the flexibility to offer other contractual mechanism such as zero-hours contracts, or casual and short term contracts where appropriate (for example for when individuals wish to work during term time only, or to cover extended leave or maternity cover) 


Providing Social Care In-house 

Consideration has been given as to whether homecare services could be brought back in house. The challenges of doing this would be considerable. Firstly, the cost of an in-house service has been modelled, focusing on staff costs alone (not including other overheads, such as premises, equipment, etc). Officers estimate than the annual cost of an in-house homecare service for Adult Social Care only would be £34.4m per year by 2023/24, compared to £27.9m, which is the modelled cost of a commissioned service including LLW. More work would need to be done to model the costs of a Children’s service, but it is likely to be more expensive than a commissioned service. 


The modelling is based on needing 750 carers, 50 supervisors and 14 additional managers (Team Leaders up to a Head of Service) which is an extremely conservative estimate of the staffing required. Staffing ratios would need to be considered – the service has been modelled on the basis of 1 supervisor to 15 staff. Officers have also assumed that staff would be working on permanent contracts, and there would be no use of zero hours’ contracts. 


There are a number of factors that make in-house homecare services more expensive than services commissioned from external providers. It needs to be recognised that many homecare providers are working with few overheads and little organisational infrastructure. It is not uncommon for smaller providers to be led by a manager / owner, who will perform a number of roles within the organisation, and also directly deliver care when needed. The flexibility that this gives providers can’t be replicated if the service was to be brought back in-house. 


Providers are also able to manage their workforce so that they are not working during parts of the day when demand for homecare is much lower. There are peaks in demand in the morning, lunchtime and evening, with little demand between times. Whilst providers use zero-hours’ contracts to help manage this (and it’s agreed we want to reduce their use), the council would not have this option. Therefore, an in-house service would be paying for staff 
at times when they would not be working to full capacity, adding to the cost of services. 

Market sustainability would be an issue if Brent was reliant on one, in-house provider and would bring into question our ability to meet our Care Act requirements with regard to market sustainability and choice. There would also be considerable risk in having one provider, and whether we could ensure we could manage the various issues that arise when delivering homecare, such as safeguarding issues, quality management and workforce considerations and customer satisfaction. 


Given that homecare services have been commissioned from other providers in recent years, the council has no experience in managing a homecare service. This expertise would need to be brought in to ensure that services were run in line with rules and regulations, (for instance, the service would need to be CQC registered before care could be delivered) as well as ensuring it was as efficient as possible, making best use of staff time and resources. At this stage, progressing this option is not recommended. 


The report argues that the proposed changes would meet Unison's Care Charter but these claims rest on successful re-procurement and will need to be probed at the Scrutiny meeting.

Unison Care Charter

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Brent Council to implemement contingency plan for Allied Healthcare adult social care clients today

More than a week ago I reported on the collapse of Allied Healthcare, providers of adult social care in Brent and across the country. LINK

I contacted Brent Council Press Office to ask what contingency plans had been put in place for Brent recipients of their care. I had no response, despite several phone calls and email reminders, the latest yesterday.

However, yesterday evening at Brent Council, Cllr Farah, lead member for adult social care,  announced that Allied was responsible for 94 residents and, with the situation regarding the company still unclear, Brent Council would today be implementing their contigency plan - although he gave no details of what that plan was.  Presumably the clients will be transferred to other providers but it would be important to know what steps are being taken to ensure continuity of care, including if possible retention of carers with whom people would have built a trusting relationship.

Allied Healthcare collapse impacts on Brent adult care provision

Care for older and disabled people in Brent who receive care from Allied Healthcare are facing uncertainty tonight with the news that the company is seeking to off-load its contracts to other providers.

The Care Quality Commission had warned the company last month that it had concerns about its financial viability and issued a notice to this effect. Some council had already begun the process of finding new providers although at the time of writing it is not clear whether this includes Brent.

Allied Healthcare claimed that the CQC statement had 'negatively impacted' on the company leading to loss of customers an d affecting staff retention and recruitment.

The BBC said tonight that it understood the company had been able to extend its credit for three weeks.

Ian Hudspeth, of the Local Government Association LGA, told the BBC that councils had "robust contingency plans in place". 

"Councils are confident of ensuring care for people affected and are also focused on retaining the highly valued staff that deliver these services to help keep the transition in business ownership as smooth as possible.'

In 2014 the Care Quality Commission inspected Allied Healthcare provision in Brent and found it needed improvement due to concern over the safety of its clients. LINK

Cllr Harbi Farah, Brent Council Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care told Wembley Matters:

We have a contingency plan to ensure vulnerable adults in Brent are supported, this is a priority for me and the department. I will update you.

Brent Council's 'deep and sincere regret' over Cassie's adult social care experience & commitment to learn from the case

Following on from Tuesday's story (see below) about 'Cassie' an adult on the autistic spectrum, who contracted HIV while in the care of Brent Council at a home provided by an Independent Provider, a Council spokesperson has given Wembley Matters the following statement:

“All of the partners on the Safeguarding Adults Board, including the Council, have expressed our deep and sincere regret to both Cassie and her family.   We can confirm that Cassie is now safe and happy and is having all her health and care needs met. 

“As soon as the Council became aware of the situation the Safeguarding Adults Team took immediate action to ensure that Cassie was safe and receiving the support she needed, and further steps were taken to ensure no other person was at risk.  The matter was reported to the police, who undertook a full investigation. 

“Following these immediate actions, the Council asked the Safeguarding Adult Board to consider commissioning an independent Safeguarding Adult Review (SAR).    A SAR is a nationally recognised process, under the Care Act 2014.   The Board and the Independent Chair agreed this met the criteria for a SAR because there had been serious harm in a complex case which involved a wide range of statutory and voluntary agencies.  The purpose of a SAR is to ensure the independent consideration of the facts, and to use these facts to identify and promote effective learning across all agencies.  It is a key part of improving services in order to prevent serious harm occurring again.  The function of SARs is not to apportion blame or make judgements about negligence.

“As a result of the SAR, the Safeguarding Adults Board has a multi-agency action plan.  This will be monitored by the Board and the Board’s Independent Chair, who will ensure that the lessons have been learnt across all the agencies involved.   

“The Council has fully supported this process.  We have already delivered a range of actions to improve the support we provide to vulnerable adults in Brent, including setting up a team that specifically focuses on reviewing the quality of care and support for individuals in residential placements, and integrating the health and social care learning disability teams into a single team providing holistic support to adults with a learning disability. 

“Cassie continues to do well in her new home and we continue to ensure that she is getting the support that she needs.”

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Brent Council Tax to rise 3.99% in EACH of the next 3 years and borrowing to increase

In a report LINK going before Cabinet on February 13th Brent's Chief Finance Officer is recommending a Council Tax of 3.99% over eachof the next 3 financial years:

In October 2016, Cabinet agreed to consult on a 3.99% increase in Council Tax (2% Adult Social Care precept plus 1.99% for general purpose). Some additional savings of £4.4m were also consulted upon. Following that, in December 2016, as part of the provisional local government finance settlement, central government recognised the immediate pressures in the care market. It has therefore allowed local authorities to bring forward up to 2% of the precept for 2019/20, by increasing 2017/18 and 2018/19 council tax by an additional 1%, in return for a corresponding reduction in the precept for 2019/20. Brent could therefore increase Council Tax by up to 4.99% in each of 2017/18 and 2018/19, but if it exercised this flexibility then the maximum allowable increase in 2019/20 would be 1.99%.

 After due consideration the recommendation of this report is that the budget should be constructed on the basis of a council tax increase of 3.99% in each of the next three years. This is what was consulted upon and so is clearer for residents. The additional flexibility announced in December 2016 is also of relatively minor financial benefit to the council, and has negligible long term impact from 2019/20 onwards. By increasing the council tax in this way the impact of stark and ongoing reductions to local government funding since 2010 will be partly mitigated.

The report has been issued before the budget consultation with the public has been completed and a report on the consultation will be tabled before the Cabinet meets.  Clearly this leaves little room for any change as a result of the consultation. 

In fact consultation responses have been low with 57 on line (with no clear pattern of responses) at the time the report was written and these attendances at Brent Connects meetings:

The report goes on:

Although demography, in this context, is typically discussed as a cost pressure it also results in additional income. As a consequence of this, and of the planning and regeneration policies adopted by the council, the council tax base (i.e. the number of properties on which council tax is paid) is growing significantly year on year. This increases the council tax payable to the council, and helps the council finance the various pressures caused by population growth.The council is required to balance its budget in this year as in all years. 

In order to balance its budget the council has developed an approach that will help it meet the goals of the Borough Plan and Brent 2020 Vision, comprising:

Increases in council tax to minimise the requirement to reduce services; 

Innovative capital investment to reduce costs in key services, such as temporary accommodation;

Planning for growth in services facing major demographic pressure for example adult social care;

and Investing in key services for the Brent community, e.g. community safety.

The  report states that if the 3% Adult Social Care Council Tax increase is not approved Adult Social Care in 2017-18 will have to be cut by £2.1m.  This is in addition to further cuts in the overall council budget required of £2.3m in 2017-18 and £2.1m in 2018-19.

The Council hopes to achieve  £5.6m through a civic enterprise project to increase income from Council assets (you have probably see the posters encouraging people to get married at the Civic Centre) and £8m from improving commissioning and procurement services. The Council is hoping to sell its procurement services to schools.

It is clear that increasing the number of properties in the borough is seen as one way of increasing Council Tax income, even if they are not affordable for ordinary Brent residents on an average income. Population growth increases income for charged services such as parking.

The Council has a big capital investment programme and it is planned to increase borrowing to finance the projects. Expenditure was £111.7m less than expected this year due to a variety of delivery delays and the balance will be carried forward. The Council is planning to increase the amount it raises and increase the authorised limit:

It is important to stress that the authorised limit – the maximum amount that the council may borrow – has for a number of years been several hundred millions pounds above the level of actual borrowing – last year it was set at £400m above the level of actual borrowing. It is proposed to increase that by £100m to £500m, in light of the Council’s investment strategy, while recognising that the Council has been prudent with its estimate of the additional resources that may finance capital spend. Potentially, the additional growth would cost up to an additional £3m to service annually, should the borrowing become necessary, and if this was not offset by additional income or savings. The calculation noted above merely follows from the strength of the council’s balance sheet, as it is largely prescribed by statute and regulation. 


(Bracketed red offsets borrowing requirement)

One area of interest is the school budget where the report notes that:

As at 31 March 2016, Brent’s maintained schools held £24.8m in balances, a relatively high figure, prudently held in view of upcoming school funding reforms. [Cllr Warren attacked the level of school balances at the last Full Council Meeting]

Overall DSG (Dedicated Schools Grant)  funding has increased for 2017/18 due to growing pupil numbers, however on a per pupil level it remains a cash flat settlement, with the main schools block funded on 41,879 pupils at £5,522 per pupil totalling £231.3m. The other blocks support early years provision, funded at £23.4m, and high needs provision which includes all special schools, funded at £52.7m. Total DSG funding for 2017/18 is £307.4m.  

A number of schools are expanding and as a result overall pupil numbers have increased by over 500 in Brent. The two secondary schools experiencing rapid growth of 58 and 116 pupils have gained £238K and £675K, whilst 26 primary schools experienced growth in pupil numbers with an average gain of £125K. Reductions in funding are also in line with decreasing pupil numbers, for example two secondary schools have significant drops of 25 and 54, which results in funding reductions of £260K and £441K respectively. In the primary phase, 30 schools had a fall in pupil numbers resulting in an average reduction of £44k.

After the expansions of recent years a reduction in pupil numbers in a number of schools is significant, particular when the potential impact of Brexit on immigration numbers is taken into account.  The major factor affecting school budgets is of course the reductions involved when the government introduces a new National Funding Formula.

Conrad Hall, Chief Finance Officer, commenting on the overall Brent budget states:

In considering the budget report, the following key considerations should be highlighted in particular.:

The extent to which the overspends in 2016/17 are structural, that is, that they will or may recur in 2017/18, is a particular risk. Any element of these overspends that may be structural will, if not addressed during 2017/18, require further savings to be agreed next year to offset this. Whilst plans are in place to address this the scale of risk is significant.

Delivering the saving programme agreed in February 2016 will present substantial management challenges, particularly around procurement and civic enterprise savings. Again, considerable management attention has been and is being devoted to ensure that these can be delivered, but it is important to stress again the inherent risks in delivering such a large and complex programme. 
 

That said, the budget now proposed is realistic and affordable, albeit challenging. The increases in council tax set out, if agreed in this and subsequent years, will generate significant additional revenue over time, minimising the number of difficult new decisions about funding for specific services to be proposed. If agreed, this budget would provide for affordable services in 2017/18 and 2018/19, but a further gap of nearly £13m remains in 2019/20. Building on the outcome based reviews and other initiatives to start to close this gap quickly will be an important future consideration.

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Brent Council calls on residents to make their views known on 2017-18 budget

Brent Council has issued a press release advertising the last meetings where residents can express views on the upcoming 2017-18 and by implication the 2018-19 and 2019-20 budgets.   The release (below) covers 'spending' plans but not the proposed cuts or increases in charges, although it does mention 'raising income to balance the books'. 

The Council is likely to front-load an increase in Council Tax of 4.99% in 2017-18 and again in 2018-19 but with a smaller increase in 2019-20. If this is approved 'savings' will  be needed of £5.4m in 2017-18, £0.7m in 2018-19 and a whopping £13.7m in 2019-20.  The front-loading was offered by the government so that councils can address (but only very partially) the rising costs of adult social care:

Residents across the borough are being called to have their say on Brent Council's tax and spending proposals for next year before an online consultation closes on February, 1 and at a final round of upcoming meetings with councillors.

The Brent Connects meetings at Kilburn (January, 24), Willesden (February, 7) and Kingsbury & Kenton (February, 8) form part of a ten-week consultation on the council's budget plans.

Shoppers to Asda in Wembley on Monday 30 January will also have the chance to give their views, as a supermarket roadshow of the proposals makes its final stop having visited Morrisons in Queensbury on January 14, and Sainsbury's in Willesden on January 18.

Online and at the meetings, residents will have the opportunity to have their say on the council's plans to raise council tax in response to budget cuts from central government, in order to protect services.

As well as discussing how the council plans to raise income to balance the books, views are also sought on the council's spending proposals for 2017/18.

Currently, these include spending in areas to help make Brent cleaner and safer, rubbish and recycling collection, boosting jobs and skills, protecting the vulnerable, increasing council housing, maintaining parks and open spaces and giving every child the best start in life possible.

Cllr Muhammed Butt, Leader of Brent Council, said:

"It is vital that the work we do as a Council reflects the priorities of our residents. That's we are asking the people of Brent to tell us what matters to them. I would encourage as many people as possible to visit the website, or join us at their local Brent Connects meetings"

Have your say online by 1 February 2017 or come along to one of the Brent Connects public meetings in January or February 2017.

Views taken at the Willesden and the Kingsbury & Kenton Brent Connects meetings, after the consultation portal has closed, will be added as an appendix to the Cabinet report and considered on Monday 13 February 2017 at the Cabinet meeting.

Full Council will then make a decision on the final budget for 2017/18 on Monday 27 February 2017.

Savings already agreed and new policy options can be found here:

http://democracy.brent.gov.uk/documents/s45300/Appendix%20One%20-%20Previously%20Agreed%20Savings.htm

http://democracy.brent.gov.uk/documents/s45302/Appendix%20Three%20-%20Detailed%20New%20Policy%20Options.pdf

Senior jobs at Brent Council available now up to £111,000 pa

Following the latest restructuring Brent Council is advertising the following jobs. A description of the management structure is available HERE

Leading Brent

Brent is a unique, growing and iconic borough, richly diverse and full of possibilities. As a council we take our role as place shaper very seriously and the regeneration of the borough continues at pace.  We want to ensure that this growth, and resulting opportunities, brings about real and lasting benefits for all our residents – young and old.  We have reorganised the council to meet the challenges ahead, reflect a culture of collaboration and improve services even further.  This has created the following senior leadership roles all of which report to our Strategic Directors. 

Children and Young People Services 

Operational Director – Service Integration and Improved Outcomes                   up to £111k

Managing a broad portfolio which includes front line social work, Inclusion, Early Help, Localities and Looked After Children teams you will be a qualified children’s social care professional with a depth of front line practitioner, as well senior management experience.  This is an exciting and challenging role which will drive service integration, better social work practice and improved outcomes for our most vulnerable children, young people and families.   

Operational Director – Safeguarding, Partnerships and Strategy                         up to £111k

This key role will lead our Safeguarding and Quality Assurance service, School Effectiveness and Place Planning, Partnerships and Commissioning.  You will help shape and implement strategies across the service and the council which better prepare us for the future, working with a range of stakeholders including schools, the LSCB and our Children’s Trust. Whatever your background, you will be an effective partnership worker with high level influencing and negotiation skills.   

Community Wellbeing Services

Operational Director – Adult Social Care                    up to £111k

This role will lead adult social care services which include commissioning, assessment support planning and safeguarding, and direct services to vulnerable adults and older people. Delivering high quality and innovation in Adult Social Care is fundamental to supporting and safeguarding the most vulnerable members of our community. With senior management experience in a related setting or sector, you will be passionate about promoting independence and choice across the whole health and social care system, both locally and sub regionally. You will bring vision, ambition and an operational focus that will drive the service forward.

For a confidential discussion call our advising consultants at Penna: Maggie Hennessy 07877 004648, Chris Barrow 0203 829 9754, Anita Denton 07725 554802 or Carol Coyle 020 7332 7806.

Closing date for receipt of applications: Friday 18 March 2016