Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Local Government and North Wales Assembly Member, Mark Isherwood, has raised concerns in the Assembly Chamber this week that local people are often not being involved in changes to their care and support services until after decisions have been made, and referred to a case in Flintshire.
Raising the matter with the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services on Wednesday, Mr Isherwood said when Flintshire County Council awarded its service contract to provide Disability Support Services to a non-local provider, service-users said they had not been involved in the decision.
Speaking in the Chamber, Mr Isherwood said:
“We know that the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 Part 2 Code of Practice and Guidance puts in place a system where people are full partners in the design and operation of care and support, giving them, quote, 'clear and unambiguous rights and responsibilities.'
“In your Written Statement today, you refer to planning, commissioning and delivering services, and I'm regularly having concerns and allegations expressed to me that we're still seeing consultation from above after decisions have been reached and then commissioning on a traditional commissioning model, which can disadvantage local providers.
“Earlier this summer, in Flintshire, the Council awarded its service contract to provide Disability Support Services, but not to the local provider who'd had it previously. I attended their Annual General Meeting, and asked the people present - 90 per cent of whom were disabled - whether they had been involved, as the legislation said that they should have been, in the design and delivery of their services, and they all told me that they had not been involved.
“Given your responsibilities for Local Government, for Planning, Commissioning and Delivering Services, and for Voluntary Sector and related issues, how do you propose to help Local Authorities better understand that this isn't an option, it's a requirement of Welsh Government legislation that had the support of all Parties here in the last Assembly, and that they must start doing this?”
The Cabinet Secretary replied: “We will be evaluating the pathfinders and looking at many of the issues that you've raised this afternoon as a part of that. The interim report was published today, and we will continue to work with the independent evaluators to understand some of those issues before their final report is published, which, I hope, will be in the early summer of next year.”
Mr Isherwood added: “As the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 Part 2 Code of Practice states, ‘Local authorities must put in place transparent arrangements where people are equal partners in designing and operating services’. I therefore hope the Welsh Government will help local authorities better understand how they are supposed to reconcile commissioning and procurement requirements with co-production and co-design of services with local people, where the co-design may be different to the commissioning choice.”