Agenda and draft minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Colin Hughes, Dewi Owens and Arwel Roberts.

No members declared any personal or prejudicial interests in any business identified to be considered at the meeting.

To appoint a Vice-Chair for the Committee for the 2015/16 municipal year

Nominations were sought for a member to serve as the Committee’s Vice-Chair for the 2015/16 municipal year.  Councillor Richard Davies was nominated and seconded.  No other nominations were received and it was therefore:

Resolved: - that Councillor Richard Davies be appointed as the Committee’s Vice-Chair for the 2015/16 municipal year.

No matters were raised which in the opinion of the Chair, should be considered at the meeting as a matter of urgency pursuant to Section 100B(4) of the Local Government Act, 1972.

To consider a report by the Head of Community Support Services (copy enclosed) which seeks the Committee’s views on the progress made in meeting the future needs of services users following the termination of the contract with the staffing agency at Aberwheeler Nurseries.

The Head of Community Support Services introduced his report, a copy of which had been circulated ahead of the meeting.  He outlined the background to the decision taken in December 2014 to decommission the work opportunities services currently provided by an agency at Aberwheeler Nurseries, and to seek alternative services for service-users elsewhere in the county.

Details of the membership of the work opportunities task and finish group tasked with examining the work opportunities service provided by the Council for people with learning disabilities, the Welsh Government’s (WG) vision for modern social care services, and budgetary pressures were contained within the report.

There were currently 27 individuals attending Aberwheeler Nurseries, the majority of whom attended other work opportunities services on certain days of the week.  Of these 27 individuals 21 had either agreed to increase the number of days they attended their other placement(s) or found alternative placements, whilst six were currently attending taster sessions at alternative services before they decided on what best met their needs.  There was only one service-user who was not engaging with the process at present.  That service-user had not attended Aberwheeler Nurseries on a regular basis.

In response to members’ questions the Lead Member and officers advised that:

·         Six service-users were due to be transferred to the Woodland Skills Centre at Bodfari, a number of these individuals had indicated their preference to stay together and work alongside each other.  This preference had been respected;

·         The present garden control service, which provided work opportunities for 7 individuals would be transferred to the Botanical Gardens in Rhyl.  Transferring to the Botanical Gardens would also cut down on travel arrangements for the majority of these service-users;

·         Support staff at all the alternative work opportunities locations would be employed staff and not volunteers.  They would also be Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checked;

·         Illustrative costs per head for the alternative services were set out in the report and these were considerably lower than the costs of the services currently procured from the staffing agency at Aberwheeler Nurseries;

·         The solutions arranged for individual service-users were considered as medium to long-term arrangements, subject to their needs not changing and the provider’s compliance with contract requirements e.g. quality, performance and costs.  However, there could not be a cast iron guarantee that things would not change in the long-term due to budget constraints or future government policies;

·         If, at any time, the service-user or their family/carers were unhappy with the service provided they could ask to move to an alternative work opportunities facility;

·         The service at Aberwheeler was a commissioned service, it was not run by the Council itself.  Consequently, the power to terminate the contract with the provider and source alternative services elsewhere for the service-user was delegated to the Head of Community Support Services as per the Council’s Scheme of Delegation to Officers;

·         Once the decision had been taken and communicated to the agency concerned the Social Services Department’s Complex Needs Team had, at the earliest available opportunity, started working with service-users, families and carers to find alternative suitable services for them.  The main focus of this work was to secure the best possible outcomes for the service-users and ensure that they were happy in their new environment;

·         Cynnig, the agency operating Aberwheeler Nurseries, had been informed of the Council’s intention to terminate the contract with effect from 30 June 2015 in early January 2015.  It was the agency’s responsibility to inform its staff of the changes from thereon;

·         With respect to the impact from the closure of Aberwheeler Nurseries on service-users, a negative impact had only been assessed  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.