Coventry City Council will report on its performance across Adult Social Care to Cabinet next week in readiness for national inspections of the service.
Each year the Council publishes its annual report and this year, for the first time, it will also report on its self-assessment, reflecting on the way its Adult Social Care services have been performing over the past 12 months.
Both reports are expected to be approved at its Cabinet meeting on Tuesday 1 October.
The new self-assessment is something Councils must now produce because the Care Quality Commission (CQC) will be measuring how well Councils perform their adult social care duties. This is similar to the way the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills measure services.
The CQC is responsible for assessing Local Authorities’ delivery of their adult social care functions.
The CQC will be visiting the Council at a future date to meet with officers and services users to take a closer look at local adult social care services – and will refer to the Local Authority’s self-assessment to inform its findings. A date hasn’t been confirmed yet.
Local Authorities are required to complete a Self-Assessment for issuing to the CQC following receipt of a ‘Notification of Inspection’ – that’s when the CQC identifies a date to carry out an inspection.
Reviewing its services and preparing its self-assessment will support Coventry’s Adult Social Care’s readiness for any future inspection.
Cllr Linda Bigham, Cabinet Member for Adult Services, said: “We want to be completely open about adult social care services. In fact, the more that local people and stakeholders know, the better.
“It’s really important that people understand what we and other health agencies and care services can offer.
“We have a lot of information on our website and during the past year have been holding community events to tell people more about what residents can expect from our services.
“Both the annual report and self-assessment offer an overview that I think is really useful for everyone to read.
“We try to focus our own reporting on the views of people who use our services to get a good understanding about how our services make an impact on residents.
“Both reports cover each of the four CQC themes for inspection and the quality statements associated with these themes."
She added: “It’s a good way for us to review where we are doing well and more importantly where we need to make improvements, and it makes sense to focus on the CQC themes.
“We’ll be updating the self-assessment annually and presenting it with the Annual Report. We’ll also provide it to the CQC when the Council is selected for an inspection.”
The report states: ‘The approach taken both to the Self-Assessment and Annual Report demonstrates an open approach to our successes, challenges and where we can develop further in order to improve outcomes for people with care and support needs and their unpaid carers within Coventry.
‘The Self-Assessment also provides the opportunity to present the context within which CQC will be inspecting Adult Social Care in Coventry. The production of the 2023/24 report has drawn on the pool of feedback and information that was gathered over the year from a range of sources including social care staff, Partnership Boards, the Adult Social Care Stakeholder Group, providers, partner organisations and people who have been in contact with Adult Social Care, along with their families and carers.’
Around 13 per cent of the population in Coventry is over 65. This is expected to increase by 27.7 per cent by the year 2043.