Social care quality boosted

An innovative quality assurance programme has improved the quality of adult social care and at the same time made savings for the council.

Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council’s quality assurance programme assesses social work practice against 50 standards.

This new method has driven significant improvements in safeguarding practice and court work, reduced paperwork, strengthened morale at the front line, and has led to a more efficient way of working which has resulted in significant cash savings.

The learning disabilities team is one social care service that has benefitted from the quality assurance programme. An initial review, in December 2010, identified a number of problems, including a lack of face-to-face contact with service users and inadequacies with safeguarding.

The team has now improved, particularly in its safeguarding practices. One clear example of this is the fact that the team were given support to take three cases to the Court of Protection. Despite the team having no experience of court work, the judge accepted social workers’ recommendations in all three cases and the council was praised.

Changes in working methods have also led to more face-to-face contact with service users and improved supervision.

Cllr Joe Carlebach, cabinet member for community care, said:

“This cutting edge scheme is helping the council to improve the service that we offer while saving the taxpayer money.

“The aim of the flagship quality assurance programme is to support vulnerable adults in making decisions which enhance their independence or to make decisions for vulnerable adults where they lack the capacity to do so.

“By doing this, we have managed to give social workers more time to focus on the frontline work that really matters. We have also showed that by setting quality standards and getting the operation right in the first place, financial savings will follow naturally.”

To set up the quality assurance system, 50 standards were established, five of which were identified as critical: those relating to risk assessments, safeguarding, capacity, supervision and courtesy to service users.

Each social care team is scored against those standards, drawing on 12 sources of evidence, including financial information, surveys of users, carers, social workers and managers and, significantly, an in-depth analysis of one case per social worker on the team.

In each case, the social worker, supervisor, service users and any informal carer is interviewed and the case record reviewed, providing a deep and rounded insight into practice.

The team's scores translate into an action plan for improvement, agreed between the quality assurance team and the service manager. The frequency of further reviews is based on a team’s performance.