Partnership Board Minutes 25 February 2004

Minutes of the Meeting held at St.Chad’s Parish Centre on Wednesday 25th February 2004.

Welcome!

Dave Rosser welcomed everyone to the meeting and Board members introduced themselves.

People at the meeting:
Dave Rosser, Head of Service
Janet Wright, Joint Commissioning Service Manager
Nancy Hill, North West Primary Care Trust
Ken Mccullough, Carer
Sheila Dunham, Learning Disability and Information Services (LMHT)
Michael Cass, Leeds People First
Fiona Evans, Leeds People First
Bill Walton, Leeds Learning Disability Forum
Norman Roberts, Finance Director North East PCT
Thea Stein, Chief Executive North East PCT
Khalid Arian, Finance Manager

Other People who came to the meeting:
Steve Harris, Supporting People Team
Les France, Leeds Advocacy

People who could not come to the meeting
Councillor Sherry Bradley
Doug Martin, Acting Co-ordinator Leeds Children & Young People’s Strategic Partnership
Andrew Walsh, Service User
George Mcintyre, Chief Executive North East PCT

Other things we should talk about:

Ken Mccullough – Direct Payments and Person Centred Planning

Bill Walton – People in Action “Challenging Double Discrimination Project”

Declaration of interest

There were none

Minutes from the last meeting and matters arising

Housing Strategy Project Manager
- Dave Rosser said the post of Project Manager would be advertised within the next few weeks.

National Care Standards
- Dave Rosser told the Board the National Care Standards inspectors had been to visit the hostels. As soon as any information is available, it will be shared with the Partnership Board.

The P.F.I. Bid
– We will soon know whether or not the P.F.I. bid has been successful and the Partnership Board will be kept informed.

Phase III Trust Reconfiguration
- Dave Rosser discussed the Phase III Trust Reconfiguration and said more work will be carried out. Further information will be fed back at the next Partnership Board meeting. Sheila Dunham stated that a meeting has been arranged within the Trust for Tuesday 2nd March to discuss the outstanding issues.

Presentations and Reports

1. Deciding how the Board will make things happen in the future.
2. Recommendations from the Away Day.

Janet Wright gave a presentation on what was discussed at the Partnership Board Away Day held on 21st January 2004. She started by explaining why the Away Day had been held.

The Valuing People Support Team had issued new guidance to all the Partnership Boards to assist in reviewing three main areas:

1. Providing leadership
2. Helping everyone else make changes happen
3. Doing the important things – not trying to do everything.

The Away Day Group came up with the following recommendations:

Chairperson
Have an independent chairperson. We need to develop a job description and advertise the post. Members of the Partnership Board would be involved in the interviewing of applicants.

Councillor Bradley, the current Chair, supports this action as it is often difficult for her to attend the meetings due to council commitments.

Co Chairperson and Deputy Co Chairperson posts could be created to work as part of a team with the Chairperson. The Board would seek to employ a person with learning disabilities as the Co-Chair. The Board would again, produce a clear job description of the roles and responsibilities each position has.

Create a Partnership Executive
This group would be made up of members of the Primary Care Trusts, Joint Commissioning Service and the Council. Their role would be to make sure the Board is clear about what has to be done, who will do it and when it will be done – a clear decision making process and that decisions are made taking account of the money available and the correct procedures and law. They would be responsible for reporting back to the Partnership Board. Councillor Bradley will be part of this group.

Four Board Meetings a Year
People thought it would be a good idea to have fewer Partnership Board meetings, but meetings that lasted a whole day. Two hours did not leave enough time to discuss issues properly and to make sure everyone understood what was being discussed.

Membership of the Partnership Board
The group suggested increasing membership of the Board, to include more service users and carers. Create job descriptions for all the positions so that everyone is clear who has responsibility and who can make things happen.

Task Groups
We need to reinstate some of the task groups such as Health, Advocacy, Transitions, Transport, Workforce Development and make sure all the groups have representatives from the Board who are able to feed the information back at the Partnership Board meetings. We also need to make sure they are all working the same way.

Reference Groups
There is already a Service User Reference Group but we need to develop a Carers Reference Group. The established ACTCOM group could be used to start this off.

Our Vision
Janet Wright finished by reminding everyone, we must not forget the principles of Valuing People. The Board needs to have a clear vision of what it wants to achieve and how this can be done. The Partnership Board is not an ‘executive body’ in its own right. This means that Board decisions cannot force other organisations to do things. They have to work by persuading people and people accepting they should do what the Board asks.

After the presentation various people asked questions and made comments:

Bill Walton said that the Partnership Board needed to address the issues for the black and ethnic minority community as a priority. He had understood that there would be a Black and Ethnic Minority Reference Group.

Ian Buttery said some of the problems for people with learning disabilities working for the Partnership Board is if they are paid, their benefits can be affected. Michael Cass said that he had been to a number of meetings where this had been raised as an issue both locally and nationally.

Dave Rosser asked for anyone willing to take part in the recruitment of the Chair and Co-Chair person, to give their names to Janet Wright or himself. The results of this will be published and sent to all concerned.

UPDATES

Housing Strategy
- Steve Harris told the Board the Housing Strategy and Action Plan has been completed. Its aim is to focus on three priority groups:

1. Those people living in the learning disability hostels
2. People living with older carers
3. Young people in transition

Dave Rosser commented that it was good that the Housing Strategy had chosen young people in transition as one of the priority groups as he had recently had to present a report to the Social Services Scrutiny Committee on services for young people with learning disabilities.

The accessible version is now available and the final version will hopefully be ready within the next month.

CLDT Review – Janet Wright

1. The Community Nursing Team have been enhanced and will be moving into a position where they are linked with the PCTs. They are split into two teams managed by Brian Wilks and Norman Campbell. The Joint Care Management Team will follow a similar model and be managed by Steve Bardsley and Graham Heffernan.
2. Accommodation is still a problem for the whole service. It would be a good idea if we could all work together in the same building.
3. There needs to be a review of the therapy services such as physiotherapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy and psychology.
4. Dave Rosser stated that we need to look at how our services meet the Fair Access to Care Policy which states that all people with learning disabilities receiving a service, must be reviewed.

Finance Update-
Khalid Arian told the Board that the Independent Sector was facing a £1,000,000 overspend although this is still under review and they are looking at ways of reducing this amount. From April it has been estimated that there will be a shortfall of 2.2 million. The reason for this, as discussed in the previous Partnership Board meeting, is due to the number of people with highly complex needs requiring a service.

Sheila Dunham asked what would happen at the end of March if there was still a deficit? Dave Rosser said that it is difficult to say at the moment although he will be working with the partners to form an action plan.

Thea Stein added that it is a serious situation and there are no easy solutions and we should be looking at ways of meeting the needs of people with complex needs within Leeds and not referring them to other areas.

Other things to talk about (Any other business)

Bill Walton discussed the “Challenging Double Discrimination Project”. He said that the group had 6 African-Caribbean people with learning difficulties who wanted to work with the Partnership Board and Joint Commissioning Service. He also asked for the Partnership Board to put forward a leadership development project which will be starting in June. It will be for local teams who want to improve services and supports for people with learning difficulties from ethnic minority communities. More information will be available at the next Partnership Board meeting.

Learning Disability Development Fund
Dave Rosser said that there are two types of funding available from the Learning Disability Development Fund. These are revenue and capital.

The capital funding comes from the Strategic Health Authority and Leeds has been successful this year in an application for computer equipment to support people with limited communication skills. Janet Wright pointed out that there has not yet been any notice of funding for next year.

As far as revenue is concerned, we have received notice that there will be revenue funding available next year. However, most of it has already been allocated by the Partnership Board and revenue funding currently pays for the Modernising Day Services Project Managers post, advocacy services, delivery of PCP training and User Involvement. There is some money available under what is called leadership money. Dave Rosser said that we need to set up a system as to how this money is spent. Dave Rosser asked if anyone was willing to support this process and Michael Cass and Nancy Hill volunteered.

Bill Walton said this would need to happen as soon as possible because the projects needed to know if they could go ahead.

Direct Payments–
Ken Mccullough has been invited to many carers group to discuss Direct Payments. Dave Rosser said the organisation called Real Life Options help with direct payments and he is hoping they will be able to do a presentation to the Partnership Board in the near future. Janet Wright pointed out that although there is a real commitment to supporting people to take up Direct Payments, we need to be clear that there is no separate budget for this.

Person Centred Planning-
Ken Mccullough said that carers wanted to design their own care plans but in order to do this, they need access to Direct Payments. Dave Rosser told the Board that the local authority can only offer Direct Payments when people’s needs have been assessed.

The next meeting of the Partnership Board will be on Tuesday 20th April 2004 10 am to 12 noon at St Matthias Church Centre, Leeds 4

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