A look back at what the Adult Services Scrutiny Panel has been up to

The Covid-19 pandemic has had its effects on all of the Council’s services including scrutiny.

Let us take a look back at what the Adult Services Scrutiny Panel has been up to:

March 2020:

In response to the national lockdown, all scrutiny meetings were temporarily suspended and therefore meetings booked for April and May were cancelled. However, the Adult Services Scrutiny Panel held a meeting just before this on 17 March 2020.

Scrutiny Councillors met with the Social Services Strategy and Performance Improvement Officer who briefed the Panel on the Wales Audit Office (WAO) report and recommendations and on how Swansea is performing against the recommendations. The Panel learned that the Council has a long term strategy for prevention and have set actions against each of the WAO’s recommendations. The Panel have agreed to add some of the actions with their target dates to its forward work programme.

July 2020

In July 2020 the Panel met for the first time virtually to receive a service specific update on the Covid-19 pandemic. The discussions held included; the recovery plan, the restructure of domiciliary care, the impact on residential services and issues around re-prioritising packages of care and eligibility.

The Panel expressed thanks to all social care, health and private domiciliary care staff. To read more and/or view this recorded meeting please click here.

October 2020

The Panel met to receive a briefing on the Performance Monitoring Report for August 2020 and to discuss staff sickness in Adult Services. The Panel expressed concern to hear that all Health and Social Care was under extreme pressure which was more problematic with the second surge of the pandemic. The Panel also discussed issues around Domiciliary Care and concerns about mental health and asked if any additional services had been put in place since the start of the pandemic.

Click here to view all reports presented and to view details of all that was discussed in detail at this meeting.

December 2020 – February 2021

The Adult Social Services Scrutiny Panel and the Child and Family Social Services Scrutiny Panel met jointly to relieve some of the pressure on staff dealing with the crisis. The Joint Social Services Scrutiny Panel focussed on performance monitoring and mainly looked at the Directorates management of Covid-19.

Click here to read more about what was discussed at these meetings.