Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
860-873)
MS JENNY
OWEN AND
COUNCILLOR SIR
JEREMY BEECHAM
3 DECEMBER 2009
Q860 Dr Naysmith: There are things
like brokerage and advocacy and advice which are widely seen as
essential to help people put together fair packages for themselves.
One or two social workers have said, "This is great. It takes
us back to being real proper social workers." Is that right?
Is that the role of a social worker? If not, who should be doing
all these things?
Ms Owen: That is a good question.
When I was saying: "It is wholesale change." We are
now in a position in all our local authorities of thinking, "What
is the role of social workers and of other people in the local
authority and of other people outside the local authority, in
the voluntary sector, in our user-led disability organisations?
Where do these new responsibilities and roles fit." That
is why I was saying that it is big operational changes as well
as just what you think about personal budgets.
Q861 Dr Naysmith: Who gives the advice
in your authority when someone undertakes to go personalised?
Ms Owen: At the moment we have
a range of things. Because we were an authority that had a lot
of direct payments, we have built on a service that we buy from
our disability organisation, the Coalition of Disabled People
in Essex, a user-led organisation which supplies our system to
support those people who have set up through direct payments.
We are contracting with them to provide support for people who
are getting personal budgets. We also have social workers who
are starting the support planning, and my question to our executive
management team is: "What shall we do in the future?"
What has been really interesting is having the taskforce report
on the future of social work coming out yesterday, because it
is helping us to start to define what really we should be using
our qualified social workers to do. Where can we really use their
expertise and where can we use other people? I have heard others,
Peter and John who you had giving evidence this morning, talking
about potentially the over-professionalisation of brokerage being
a problem, but in my view it does not matter which organisation
it is. There are some people—and I think user-led organisations
are a good example—who, because they have been through this
system, understand the nature of peer support and could offer
a very good brokerage service. I do not think that would be over-professionalising
it. In my view, that is probably the future but it will not happen
overnight.
Q862 Dr Naysmith: You presumably
are paying for it as an authority.
Ms Owen: Yes.
Q863 Dr Naysmith: Should that come
out of the payment that is made to them or should it be from council
tax and local taxes?
Ms Owen: There is an argument
that if you want an ongoing social work service, that is a service,
a care management service, and that is a service you should pay
for. There is an argument that you could pay for a support plan.
At the moment we are not charging people for a support plan. We
believe that it is part of our responsibility for the authority
to get right.
Q864 Dr Naysmith: Switching hats,
in other authorities is it different?
Ms Owen: With my ADASS hat on.
As far as I am aware, in terms of support planning, that is not
a service that has a widescale charging system of being charged
through your personal budget. How it will evolve in the future
if it goes into brokerage is a question we will have to look at.
Q865 Dr Naysmith: Jeremy, do you
have anything to add to that?
Councillor Sir Jeremy Beecham:
Not really, except that it could be counterproductive to start
charging people to help them through the system. Because if they
do not take the help, it may end up that something that does not
suit them ultimately leads to greater cost on the public purse
if the system does not work properly.
Q866 Dr Taylor: I have a series of
questions about personal assistants. Remembering that personal
assistants might be, as it were, employed by banks of PAs, remembering
they might be just privately engaged people, should the new Vetting
and Barring system apply?
Councillor Sir Jeremy Beecham:
I suppose you could regard it as an aspect of safeguarding in
some respects, could you not? Obviously we do take that seriously.
Without getting too close to Mr Cameron's views about health and
safety and regulation and that kind of thing, one wants to be
balanced about this. The important thing is that councils will
ensure that there is adequate training available for people and
an expectation that those who are assisting will have undertaken
some training and on a continuing basis, and that this is a factor
that people will be encouraged to take into account when they
are making their choices. How formal it has to be, I am not really
qualified to say. Certainly on the training side there needs to
be some investment in ensuring that people have the necessary
skills.
Ms Owen: There are risks and balances
here. If you regulate the PAs through the Vetting and Barring
system, then you may have some risk diminished but you will also
lose flexibility. You may have a range of people at the moment
who would want to help you with your PAs, some of your neighbours
and so on, and if you have to go through a whole system that might
be expensive and certainly would be administratively burdensome.
Would people say, "I don't really want to be bothered to
do that"? You could lose on the flexibility but at the same
time you might be able to safeguard against risks in a certain
way. We are still looking at it in terms of a position. We do
not know how many self-funders there are who are living at home,
but let us just say that half the people who need social care
services are self-funders who do not get any of the regulation
that potentially we are talking about, then it is really important
that safeguarding systems are built into the normal way in which
we do our business. Things around how we make sure things are
legal, trading standards, and all those ways in which you can
diminish risk to us in the community are the things that we need
to be looking at. There is an overarching general way in which
we need to make sure that there is safety in services, and then
there is something about do you get into Vetting and Barring,
which has checks and balances.
Councillor Sir Jeremy Beecham:
There is also a role presumably for general practice here. Obviously
there should be contact. Given the fact that people are clearly
in need of support anyway, there ought to be contact with their
GP. One would hope that there would be some attention paid within
the practice by doctors or other staff to keep an eye on how people
are faring under the system. Without getting that too formalised,
there needs to be liaison obviously with those with responsibility
for care, whether it is a personal assistant or the GP practice,
or, I guess, hospitals if they are involved as well. They would
not just be standing on their own as personal assistants; there
would be other people around with an interest who in that way
able to keep an eye on the situation.
Q867 Dr Taylor: That is almost an
ideal world, is it not? We all know GPs are rather pulling back
from watching people in their homes.
Councillor Sir Jeremy Beecham:
Or visiting people in their homes or doing anything very much,
it seems to me sometimes—but that is perhaps another story.
Ms Owen: Of course local authorities
still have a duty to review people who are having care and support,
so we will continue to have that.
Q868 Dr Taylor: Even self-funders.
Ms Owen: Not self-funders. People
who are paying through their personal budgets to have a PA, we
have a duty of reviewing.
Q869 Dr Taylor: Would it be preferable
for future people hiring personal assistants themselves to be
able to call on the banks of PAs that councils hold? Because those
would be approved people, is that what we should aim for really,
that everybody should have access to a bank of vetted people?
Councillor Sir Jeremy Beecham:
They should have access to it but not necessarily be required
to use it is probably the way to put it.
Q870 Dr Taylor: Access but choice.
Councillor Sir Jeremy Beecham:
Yes.
Ms Owen: Yes.
Q871 Dr Taylor: The very last question
you have partly answered. Are there any restrictions that should
be put on what people can use their direct payments for?
Ms Owen: They should not do anything
illegal.
Q872 Dr Taylor: That we have heard
before. That is the only restriction we have had so far.
Ms Owen: The most important thing
is that it meets the care and support needs.
Q873 Dr Taylor: That is right. They
have to be able to choose, do they not?
Councillor Sir Jeremy Beecham:
Yes.
Dr Taylor: So only that they should not
do something illegal.
Ms Owen: Yes.
Dr Taylor: Thank you.
Charlotte Atkins: Thank you very much
for coming along today and helping us with our inquiry. It has
been a very useful session. Thank you.
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