NORTH YORKSHIRE COUNCIL

21 May 2025

STATEMENT OF THE CHAIR OF CARE AND INDEPENDENCE OVERVIEW & SCRUTINY COMMITTEE

The Care and Independence Overview & Scrutiny Committee scrutinises the needs of vulnerable adults, older people and people whose independence needs to be supported by intervention from the public or voluntary sector.

Since my last statement to Council in February 2025, the Committee has met once on 27 March 2025, when the Committee considered the following items of business:

· Update on ongoing work to improve support for unpaid carers

· Attendance of Older People’s Champion

· Complex Care for Working Age Adults

The Chair of Carers Plus Yorkshire who have been commissioned by the Authority to provide support to unpaid carers across the county for the last 30 years, attended the meeting to provide an overview of the services her organisation provides and outlined the intelligence they share and their signposting to other services.

The Committee noted the statutory duty on Local Authorities to undertake assessments of carers’ needs, and were pleased to note an online self-assessment tool was being developed, recognising that assessment was not about deciding if a carer was capable but deciding what type of support they might benefit from.  We also received an overview of:

· The commissioned services available, outlining the practical, emotional and social support and training the Local Authority offers to carers.

· The improvement Plan and key actions.

· The co-ordinated approach to working with partners, based in GP practices to identify carers and provide early intervention.

· The home from hospital scheme delivered by both VCSE providers, and the short intervention service aimed at reducing the number of discharged patients from returning to hospital.

The Older People’s Champion presented her annual report for 2024-25 which detailed her involvement in the many activities, events, and services available across the county, for the benefit of older people.

Having discussed how the Council could be encouraged  to be more structured and intentional around pre-retirement healthy lifestyle welfare checks, we thanked the Older People’s Champion for the volume of work undertaken and noted:

· The success of the Age Friendly Photography competition which would hopefully become an annual event;

· The Dancing for Wellbeing sessions held across the county and the recent National Day of Dance event held in Harrogate that would hopefully become an annual event;

· The challenging issue for older people of accessing public transport to health services;

· The need to encourage more young people in to the HAS workforce;

· The ongoing work to support the needs of older workers, with 41% of the NYC workforce being 51+;

· The effect of the loss of winter fuel payments on the elderly, with lots of concern from communities – Members noted the work to promote / signpost other available benefits;

Finally, the Committee received a detailed presentation on the provision of complex care and supportive housing to working age adults, noting the findings in the recently published Newton Report which addressed the case for improving outcomes for working age adults with complex needs and lifelong disabled adults.

We welcomed the recent introduction of an intensive ‘Team around the person’ partnership model recommended by the CQC Peer Review with the aim of developing a unique care plan for each individual to address their specific needs, and requested a further update on the delivery of the model for a future meeting.  We also discussed the ‘Making Every Adult Matter’ approach and the hotspots across the county, and the planned work to develop a policy around complex decision judgement and decisions.

Having received an overview of the supported accommodation currently available across the county and the different types i.e. extra care, supported living (long term) and supported housing (short term), we agreed that many older people do not want to live in care homes or shared housing and want to remain as close to independent as possible.  We therefore suggested there was a need for an interlocking model that would provide different types of accommodation for different stages in life, built in nice places close to amenities etc.

The committee next meets on 21 July 2025.

COUNCILLOR KARIN SEDGWICK