Blackpool Council: local authority assessment

There was an adult social care improvement plan which included some areas highlighted by a peer review in 2023. Whilst we found there had been a more recent priority to resource improvement around safeguarding responsibilities, there was a clear lack of resource and pace needed to prioritise shortfalls around prevention, early intervention, strength based approaches and equity in peoples experiences. Senior leaders told us the delays in progressing actions within the adult services improvement plan had been impacted by a number of issues. For example, staff absences and gaps, leadership changes, a need to focus on safeguarding as an area of high risk, a lack of clarity of what improvements were recommended or needed, issues with version control and generally a lack of resource such as project management to carry out improvements alongside business as usual which was said to result in a lack of ‘buy in’ or time from managers to contribute. A senior leader also told us there was a lack of engaging staff in leadership posts to respond to a needed culture change, some had left the local authority, but some remained in post.

Where the local authority had dedicated resource and priority there was evidence of improvement to people’s experiences. For example, the carers strategy and work within this was beginning to make a positive difference to improve care and support. The Carers Strategy 2023-2028 demonstrated coproduction with adult carers. Engagement sessions with 17 unpaid carers were held to understand what was working and what was not working, how needs could be best met and what potential gaps in current services there was. People and staff told us the strategy reflected feedback from these unpaid carers it gave descriptions of what success would look like and actions for each listed priority to address concerns. Staff told us this had resulted in improvements to identification and effective signposting of unpaid carers, and unpaid carers consistently told us the positive impact the carers service was having to support their role.

Co-production within adult social care was developing in Blackpool. There was a 'resilience revolution co-production' team developed from children's services, this included experiences of young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and their unpaid carers. The Integrated Care Board (ICB) had funded a project and worked with the local authority and SEND partnership board to plan to help young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities achieve their ambitions within a strategy which spanned 2024–2028. This plan was co-produced through a series of face-to-face sessions with young people, professionals, parents and adults with SEND to help those aged 14-25 who have special educational needs and/or disabilities to live the life they choose. The model of working together shaped the strategy and set out a promise to help young people to do what is important for them and provided a foundation for all Blackpool services supporting young people to prepare for adulthood.

Blackpool Researching Together was an all age programme to establish a health determinants research collaboration. The collaboration included a local university, the NHS Hospital Trust and an empowerment charity. Funding had been awarded between 20222027 from the National Institute for Health Research's public health research programme. There was a national network of 30 local authority-based research partnerships. The 4 priorities in Blackpool were First 1001 days (conception to age 2), Education, Employment and Skills, Mental Health and Housing. The collaboration aimed to bring together the knowledge of local people including those that were seldom heard, the Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise (VCFSE) sector, councillors, academics and data analysts to work towards a co-produced goal ‘Together we create and share knowledge that creates health equity for the Blackpool community and beyond’. At the time of the CQC assessment the programme had recruited a team, carried out community engagement, developed a model of co-producing research, and led a national workshop on co-production of research.

A senior leader also told us work had started with an aim to reduce HIV transmission and stigma in older people. This project was not yet able to evidence any positive impacts on people’s experiences. However, Blackpool had signed up to a global initiative and was meeting regularly to work with care home providers and encourage providers to have training on the subject.

However, there were missed opportunities for co-production. For example, the creation of the adult social care vision, draft Prevention Strategy and draft Commissioning Strategy. There were aspirations to engage in co-production at a wider scale and a plan to develop a co-production statement for July 2025. People, staff and partners told us there was more to do to embed coproduction across all areas of adult social care, and evidence any impact it was having. People with lived experience felt that there was a limited understanding of co-production within the local authority but the senior leaders wanted to understand peoples experiences and were ‘not afraid to hear the challenge.’ They recognised change could be a long process and there had been involvement of people and unpaid carers at some strategy level such as areas within children's services and the Carers Strategy. However, this now needed to be extended to all stages through design, delivery and evaluation, rather than simply requesting ‘feedback.’ For example, there was an autism partnership board which included a co-chairing model and people with lived experience set the agenda. However, adults within this board told us they had not been involved in the autism service development following outcomes from the board, meaning their impact was limited. In response, senior leaders told us strategy and service development pre-dated the development of the Autism Board which had been developed as a result of feedback from people, unpaid carers, partners in recognition that Autism Board was needed to be separate from the established Learning Disability Partnership Board.

There were shortfalls in personalised approaches which required corporate leadership to work together across adult social care, commissioning and public health to promote a culture that was person-centred, supported choice and control and aimed to tackle inequalities. We found a culture within the local authority that led to people more likely to be at risk of avoidable or unintentional harm. For example, senior leaders told us staff were making decisions for people with care and support needs often with the intention of protecting them rather than allowing them to make their own choices. Senior leaders told us there was a need for the culture within adult social care practice to move from risk-led actions to a more strength based and enabling choice and positive risk-taking approach. However, there was no evidence of any strategic work to address identified workplace culture or behaviours nor additional transformation support to ensure risks were mitigated during the change in processes and practice.

The local authority had commissioned a consultancy organisation to support them to codesign and deliver change within assessment and interventions. The approach aimed to promote a single worker model to avoid people needing to repeat themselves, promote active listening towards people and unpaid carers, and a focus on empowering people’s individual strengths and community assets to understand and support their situation. The organisation had worked in partnership with staff as ‘innovators,’ senior leaders and people (through a feedback survey). The consultancy organisation and senior leaders measured the success of the change and there were examples of positive impacts on staff practice. However, there was more to be done to monitor and embed a consistent application of good practice. The local authority had prioritised quality assurance within safeguarding section 42 enquiries as a risk-based decision to ensure statutory duties in this area were prioritised, but this currently had not had the same impact on initial conversations, needs and unpaid carers assessments, and interventions to evidence it was improving outcomes for people with care and support needs. Senior leaders had developed a draft Quality Assurance Framework to support this approach, and managers were carrying out dip sampled audits however this had not been fully embedded at the time of the CQC assessment. The adult services improvement plan showed this was being monitored by senior leaders with a target to provide future assurances.

Staff consistently told us they were proud to work for the local authority and were passionate about serving the people of Blackpool. However, there was mixed feedback about continuous learning and improvement culture in Blackpool. Staff told us that line managers supported them well, and there were opportunities to learn and develop, such as accessing social work apprenticeships, Approved Mental Health Professional and Best Interest Assessor qualifications. Students and newly qualified social workers were well supported and there was a buddy system for new staff. Staff had membership for online research resources and senior leaders told us staff could protect two hours of continuous development time each month. This showed the local authority’s commitment to embed evidence-based practice and expertise in the organisation. However, there was more to do to improve induction and training offers to ensure staff felt confident and senior leaders were assured staff were competent. There was a clear and formal programme for newly qualified social workers which aimed to support them while encouraging development. There was training from external and internal partners such as advocacy services and local authority legal services, however there was more to do to understand the workforce training needs and the effectiveness of training carried out in relation to improving people’s outcomes. Staff were supportive of each other including across teams and staff members could easily contact staff in other teams with queries and there were opportunities to learn from each other.

Senior leaders told us they were proud of areas they considered best practice within adult social care. For example, connecting people with learning disabilities to person centred interests such as a photography group. People with care and support needs having a catering service in the community which brought about experience to gain qualifications. There was recognition that autistic people could be underserved in Blackpool and the local authority was proud of the dedicated autism team and its development to meet a specific set of needs. However, the team and service design had not joined up with health pathways this meant areas of partnership working could be disjointed and people could wait longer. For example, there was a need to request the mental health team to provide specialist support where there were gaps in expertise. Senior leaders told us there were ambitions to improve this. There was more for senior leaders to do to understand and respond to their own practice and to assure themselves that their systems and practices were effective. There was mixed feedback from senior leaders about whether they did enough to look at good practice in other areas. There were examples of collaborative work and research within the area but more to do to evidence how this improved practice and peoples outcomes within adult social care.

There was a lack of proactive gathering of peoples feedback. The local authority had formal feedback and complaints procedures and commissioned the local Healthwatch network to support people to share their experiences of care and had carried out a specific safeguarding project. However, there was no consistent evidence that all feedback translated into changes and developments to practice to effectively improve people’s wellbeing and outcomes.

There were some examples of positive changes occurring after serious incident feedback. For example, as a result of a coroner’s report, there was training for Approved Mental Health Practitioners, and the local authority had responded to feedback from carers which had resulted in training being delivered to practitioners. Some partners had noticed positive changes as a result.

Senior leaders had feedback from staff about practice, partnership working, learning and wellbeing. However, there was limited evidence of action to address all concerns, and where action was noted, there was limited progress. In one example, the local authority had reports from the Employer Standards Health Check for Registered Social Workers over the past 2 years. It showed some social workers had directly experienced racism or discrimination towards themselves or colleagues. Following the CQC site visit senior leaders told us there had been efforts to ensure that staff were aware of expectations within the workplace and were able to access support when they needed it. Over the past 12 months, 93% of adult social care staff had undertaken equality and diversity training and sexual harassment training. New ‘active bystander’ training had also been introduced over the past 18 months corporately to support staff to intervene when they witness harassment or abuse. Senior leaders told us the new training focused on reducing the number of people in the community, including staff, who experience power based abuse and harassment. There were aspirations to actively promote the training across adult social care services, however this had not taken place at the time of the CQC assessment and therefore there was not yet conclusive evidence of any effective impact this could have.

The local authority’s annual feedback and complaints report 2023-2024 showed there were 276 sources of feedback relating to adult social care. There was 182 sources of queries or positive feedback, and 77 complaints, which was less than the previous year. 36 sources of feedback were from Members of Parliament (MP) enquiries, 11% of complaints were upheld and 50% partially upheld with 16 complaints referred to the Local Government Ombudsman. The majority of complaints related to the quality of service. The local authority broke complaints into themes and acted when a complaint was upheld. Senior leaders told us that there was no formal mechanism for adult social care staff to learn from peoples’ feedback and there was limited evidence of this informing strategy and planning. However, there were examples where learning influenced practice and delivery. For example, the local authority had several complaints about financial assessments. As a result, there had been a change to procedures so that financial assessments started sooner and staff were reminded to be clear when advising about financial assessments and means tested cost of care with people. There had been some changes to staff structures to address this but there was more to be done to evidence how effective this had been as some people still waited for financial assessments. Senior leaders aspired to develop a way to bring all feedback together including national data to produce learning and strategy development but this had not progressed at the time of the CQC assessment.