Issue - meetings

To update the Committee on the performance of the Adult Social Care Emergency Duty Service.

The Director of Operations for Adult Social Care, Head of Access and Carers Service and Emergency Duty Service Manager introduced and presented the item. The main points of which were as follow:

·       The current ASC Emergency Duty Service (EDS) model incorporated the Bournemouth and Poole services of 2018 and became the BCP service in 2019.

·       The EDS consists of 5 contact officers who are all very skilled in screenings and risk assessments that come in via telephone calls.

·       Officers can also act as appropriate adults if the individual in question is a vulnerable adult.

·       Within the service, there are a number of mental health practitioners who have been approved by the local authority (social services) to carry out duties under the Mental Health Act (MHA) following suitable training. These could be social workers, Occupational Therapists, nurses, for example, though currently most are social workers.

·       The EDS operates outside normal office hours (5pm – 9am) including weekends, Bank Holidays and Christmas. They are the single point of contact for adults in crisis or for someone concerned about an adult in crisis.

·       The EDS tend to deal with adults in crisis who require statutory assessment, particularly under the MHA. The service will help adults under harm and neglect or those in need of an urgent package of care.

·       The EDS receives high volume of calls, and between Apr-Nov 2021 they had fielded 2767 calls.

·       The highest proportion of work undertaken by the team are cases that require MHA assessments.

·       Since the start of the pandemic the EDS has not stopped seeing people face to face.

·       The financial cost to the ASC is £775,000 a year – almost all of this funding is used on staffing.

·       The service’ legal duties and requirements fall within Care Act and MHA.

·       A small fund of £15,000 would be used throughout the year to pay for an emergency fund, a train ticket, food parcels, training and so on.

·       Members heard that equipment that has been issued by the EDS team to an individual can be returned to the contact centre.

·       There are 3 contact officers on shift over an evening. The first shift runs from 5pm till 11:30pm where there are 2 officers. They will then swap over to another, single officer to do the remaining shift. Qualified mental health professionals are able to be contacted. The Contact officers remain at home but may take calls in office space. Social workers go out alone, however they will usually meet doctors on site, as well as the patients, transport, police and so on. Contact officers are aware of all that is going on and will check on the field officers.

·       The Committee heard that the service work with Bournemouth University to recruit staff and to facilitate training.

·       The rotas are very efficiently run, despite the service facing very challenging work.

·       There is an app that is health organisation oriented that is supported by the EDS. It runs both during the day and out of hours and if an  ...  view the full minutes text for item 183