Adult Social Care redesign update

Consultation is now live on the Adult Social Care redesign. The staff engagement period ends on 6th May and the final meetings are due to take place between 20th & 23rd May. 

As part of the redesign the Mental Health and Learning Disability Teams have been given the choice as to whether they want to remain in scope of the process. Employees from both teams were given the opportunity to vote last week and final decisions will be communicated to staff this week.

Key changes proposed include a new structure to align Senior Managers and teams to a specific service area (rather than geographical area), as well as a new Safeguarding Team and an On Call rota for Senior and Service Managers. Services not in scope of the redesign include SPA, Brokerage, Client Affairs, Community Finance Officers and Business Support.

If agreed, the new structure would result in a net increase of 26.5 FTE from 277.0 FTE posts to 303.5 FTE and cost an additional £1.12m.

Follow the link below to view more information on the redesign or to submit feedback on the proposals.

+ VIEW EMPLOYEE INFORMATION AND SUBMIT FEEDBACK ON PROPOSALS

Relocation from Blencathra House to West Cumbria House

Last year a corporate decision was taken to move staff from Blencathra House to West Cumbria House. A project group has been set up to progress the relocation, including the refurbishment of West Cumbria House and creation of an additional car park. The move is anticipated to take place during Autumn 2019, although this will be dependent on the construction works being completed.

Employee engagement meetings took place at Blencathra House in March. Staff drop-in sessions will take place in mid-April, keep an eye out for dates to be announced soon.

+ READ MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE MOVE

Assistant Director appointed

Fiona Musgrave has been appointed to the post of Assistant Director - Integration and Partnerships, following holding the role on an interim basis.

She brings significant experience to the role and will be able to continue the positive work she has been doing across the county.

As Assistant Director for Integration and Partnerships, Fiona will take overall strategic leadership and management responsibility for this area of work, including oversight of both children and adult safeguarding boards.

Have you had your April Team Brief?

Team Brief is a new communication tool to keep all People employees up to date with need-to-know changes and goings-on within your service. It was launched on 4th March, and the second edition came out on 1st April (it's issued on the first Monday of every month). It is intended to be delivered to employee by their managers, face to face wherever possible. 

You should receive the April Team Brief from your manager. If you have not, please speak to your manager.

New system for person centered care planning

From 28th March Cumbria Care staff at Riverside Residential Home, Kendal started using IAS to access, record and update service user care plans. IAS is the online system that Cumbria County Council use to record and hold information about Adults service users. Previously staff at Riverside would record care plans and service user data on paper and in hard-copy filing systems. Jackie Leech, Quality Assurance and Governance Manager - Provider Services is pleased with the success of the electronic system "Feedback from Cumbria Care staff using the new system has been really positive. There are many advantages of the changes including more information being available to those making decisions about care plans and improved security of the service user’s personal data. Given the success of the changes we hope the system can be rolled out in other homes."

+ FOR MORE INFO EMAIL JACKIE.LEECH@CUMBRIA.GOV.UK

Active Cumbria and Public Health support new School Games in Cumbria

On 27th and 28th March almost 700 children from across the county descended on Penrith Leisure Centre to take part in the Spring Finals of the 2019 Cumbria School Games, which is the first ever competition of its type.

Richard Johnston, Active Cumbria’s Senior Operations Manager said; “It’s wonderful to see all the children taking part in the activities over the last two days. The hard work put in by the local School Games Organisers, sports leads and teachers was evident throughout making for an enjoyable two days. All of the young people involved gave some really great performances and it was great to see the first Cumbria School Games medals of 2019 handed out to teams from across the county”.

+ READ COVERAGE BY THE NEWS & STAR

Places still available for Social Work Practice workshop 

+ BOOK YOUR PLACE

+ MORE ABOUT DR TURNELL

Views sought on plans to join NHS Trusts

On 26th March Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust started a six week period of engagement to gather views on the merger between the organisations, due to take place in October.

They want to hear your thoughts on the opportunities the merger will bring, any concerns you have and what areas you think should be prioritised. They have shared a shortlist of potential names for the new trust, developed in line with national NHS guidelines, and would like to know your favourite: 

• Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust

• North Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust

• Lake District NHS Foundation Trust

• North Lake District NHS Foundation Trust 

+ SHARE YOUR FEEDBACK AND PREFERRED NAME

+ FIND OUT MORE ABOUT PLANS TO MERGE

What does CMS do?

CMS is part of the  traded services offer to schools. We provide tuition on musical instruments and voice to around 7,000 young people on a regular basis  as well as delivering national curriculum music each week in schools across Cumbria. We also provide whole class instrumental tuition so that young people mainly in primary schools can have an experience of learning to play and then make choices about continuing their musical pathways. We are  the lead organisation for the Cumbria Music Education  Hub  (CMEH) which is part funded through DfE  managed by Arts Council England to help enable us to deliver against  A National Plan for Music Education. This funding helps us to provide many local opportunities with our partners including access to ensembles, bands, orchestras, choirs, live concerts and collaborative projects and events with schools and National Partners such as Orchestras Live,National Youth Jazz Orchestra, National Youth Choirs, National Youth Orchestra and BBC Ten Pieces. Music Education Hubs were established in 2012 following a review of the provision of music education and the current plan is now being refreshed to take us into the 2020's.

Who's in the team?

We have 28 teachers currently offering tuition on Brass, Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion, Stings, Vocal, Woodwind and Curriculum and are supported by a team of 4 administration staff covering a range of tasks such as invoicing schools/parents, managing queries from schools, parents and partner organisations. We also have a large instrument resource of around 5,000 instruments which are used in schools and can also be hired by parents for children and young people to learn and play on. To help with moving all this it around the county we have a van and driver.

What is CMS most proud of?

Since becoming the lead for the Music Education Hub  in 2012 we've been able to expand the opportunities for young people to bring events and projects to Cumbria that we could have only previously dreamed of. So much is going on at the moment and we have so much in the pipeline, however we were extremely fortunate to be able to have the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra come to the Sands Centre to perform two schools  concerts for 200 young people  as a culmination to a project that had been designed and fully presented by a group of young people from Trinity School in Carlisle featuring Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift in a boxing ring (well at least a large papier mache heads!). In addition to this some of the RPO musicians visited two special schools in Cumbria to run a music workshop which has since led us on to work with Sandgate School on a really impactful project with a small group of children with profound and multiple learning difficulties.  

What is CMS most excited about?

We've got quite a lot going on over the next 12 months and are looking positively to the future beyond 2020. We’re working with Westmorland Youth Orchestra and Blue Jam director Jilly Jarman to perform One Small Bird with around 300 young people from the Kendal area in the leisure centre in July. The music was co-written by Jilly Jarman and Kate Stilitz and first performed at the Royal Albert Hall and then by Cumbria Youth Orchestra a couple of years ago at the Sands Centre. We're also in the process of putting together a project to celebrate the 250th birthday of William Wordsworth. We're hoping to work with a range of partners including Wordsworth Trust, CDEC, Sandgate School, Signal Films, Orchestras Live and Manchester Camerata to bring a multi experiential opportunity to primary and secondary school young people which will culminate in a celebratory performance in Ambleside in 2020.

Cath Whalley, Assistant Director Adults and Fiona Musgrave, Assistant Director Integration and Partnerships visit Brokerage Team and Community Finance Team, Workington 

Cath Whalley

Fiona and I spent a fantastic morning with the Brokerage Team (pictured below) and Client Affairs Team (pictured left) at West Cumbria House last week. It was great to meet the teams and find out more about the work that they do. It’s a really great office, open plan and so lots of opportunity for the teams to interact and work together with managers and practitioners on the same floor and we saw the benefits of this for ourselves first hand.

What really impressed us was the commitment of everyone we met to want to make a difference to the people of Cumbria, and the pride that the Brokers and Client Affairs Officers have in their roles.  

The job titles really do not do justice to the wealth of knowledge, experience and diversity of the roles of Broker and Client Affairs Officer. Much of the work is public facing, and so patience and the ability to support and work with people who might be in distress or have capacity issues is a key skill for the role – along with great IT skills, the ability to analyse and interpret information, and in the case of the Client Affairs Officers, have an aptitude for detective work!

We were made really welcome and want to say a massive thank you to Kath Mooney and Sarah Caton for inviting us, and to all the Brokers and Client Affairs Officers, for being so friendly and giving your time to share with us the valuable work that you do.

Kath Mooney, Brokerage Supervisor

It was great that Cath and Fiona had the time to come and visit the Brokerage Team (pictured on the right) in the West. Both Cath and Fiona introduced themselves and gave the team a brief overview of their working life and how they came to be in the positions of AD’s with the People Directorate. This was really interesting and the broker team commented afterwards on how approachable both Cath and Fiona were.  

We had the opportunity as a team to talk about the varying role of the Broker how it came to be and how the role has evolved over the past two years. The Brokers talked about the different areas of work they are involved with e.g. sourcing home care and customer/family contact, residential/respite care, providing stats, direct payments, transport, CHC reclaims and the links with practitioners, hospital practitioners, health workers, providers and the reablement teams. We talked about the systems we use highlighting both the positives and negatives. Cath and Fiona listened and showed interest and understanding of the daily challenges the Brokers face.

Everyone enjoyed the session and would encourage other teams to take the opportunity to invite the ADs for job shadowing.

Book your AD Workshadowing

Take the opportunity to invite an AD to visit you to see the work that you and your team do. See below dates, times and locations that are available:

• Dan Barton; 14th May - 09:00-12:00 - West
• Lynn Berryman; 30th April - Morning - Countywide & 17th May - Afternoon - West & 13th June - 09:30-12:30 - South & 8th July - 11:00-16:00 - South
• Colin Cox; 30th April - 13.00-16:30 - South & 11th June - 09:30-13:00 - South
• Jo Atkinson; 26th April 09:00-12:00 - West

If you're keen to get involved but your AD isn't listed above, or the the times given don't work for you, please get in touch and we'll look for an alternative.

Remember, we will ask you for your reflections on the visit to include in People News (and don't forget to take some pics!)

+ TELL US WHICH AD YOU WOULD LIKE TO INVITE