West Berkshire Council says there is 'more work to do' to cut waiting times for adult social care assessments, even after earning a 'good' rating from the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
The council has completed a self-assessment under the CQC Local Authority Assurance programme. Patrick Clark (Lib Dem, Newbury Wash Common), executive portfolio holder for adult social care, said the Lib Dem manifesto pledge hadn't quite got there and pledged to up the effort to reduce waiting times and improve timeliness of assessments, care planning and annual reviews.
Other priorities include boosting uptake of direct payments and clearing backlogs, sustaining improvements after team and process changes, strengthening commissioning and market shaping (including joint commissioning with health and provider market development), and developing a more granular understanding of community-level needs to target interventions and tackle inequalities.
Niki Hinman, Local Democracy Reporter
