North Tyneside Council: local authority assessment

There were clear governance, management, and accountability arrangements at all levels within the local authority. These provided visibility and assurance on the delivery of Care Act 2014 duties, people’s care and support experiences and outcomes, quality and sustainability of service provision, and risks to delivery of adult social care provision.

People told us senior leaders and Council Members were committed to engaging with people with lived experience of accessing services. People had access to senior leaders through multiple coproduction forums, groups and partnership boards and were seen to be friendly and approachable. However, many people and unpaid carers did not always understand the role of the local authority as defined by the Care Act 2014 or how they worked with partners to support adult social care. The overall picture was one of developing and improving services, with areas of strong performance and areas of development, requiring on-going relationship-building with some people and unpaid carers accessing support services.

Our assessment of the adult social care function in North Tyneside took place during a time of on-going transformation. The restructure of the adult social care directorate had begun in 2023 and was taking longer than originally planned. In its first year, the new directorate had undergone a senior management restructure to better align service areas and improve strategic focus. With this new structure in place, work had begun on a 2-year strategy to outline the medium-term vision for the directorate.

Senior leaders ensured there were clear roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities within adult social care and across all partner organisations. The local authority’s political and executive leaders were well informed about the potential risks facing adult social care provision. These were reflected in the corporate risk register and considered in decisions across the wider council.

At the time of our assessment there were 9 ongoing risks recorded on the adult social care risk register, and 1 new risk identified. Risks included demand on adult social care leading to Care Act 2014 duties not being met, AMHP services lacking capacity to meet statutory responsibilities, borough-wide adult social care workforce reductions due to overseas worker licenses being revoked leading to gaps in service, Care Call system failure risks, and Occupational Therapy waiting list increasing leading to gaps in service delivery.

There were oversight and scrutiny processes in place. For example, the Caring sub-Committee provided Cabinet Members the opportunity to understand, evaluate and challenge senior manager briefings and reports. The Health and Wellbeing Board provided oversight of the delivery of the local authority’s Equally Well strategy (2021-25), with the Director of Adult Social Services (DASS) an integral part of the board as well as having strong links with senior leaders from local NHS organisations and the voluntary and community sector, driving effective partnership working.

The North Tyneside Health, Care, and Wellbeing Executive reported into the Health and Wellbeing Board, and this was chaired by the North Tyneside Council Chief Executive. The role of this multi-disciplinary group was to drive collaboration and oversee integration at the most senior levels. Heads of Service and Senior Management Team meetings had a rolling agenda and business assurance cycle, to ensure all service areas were represented equally and received internal scrutiny.

The DASS, Senior Management Team, and staff at all levels were presented with quarterly updates on the findings from the Practice Quality Assessment Framework, including triangulation with themes from people with lived experience. These findings informed practice development activity and service-level improvement plans. For example, following a notable rise in contacts coming through Care Point led to a deep dive to establish whether preventative measures could have been taken where people were already open to adult social care services.

Staff and leaders told us the Practice Quality Assessment Framework provided data on the quality of practice experienced by people who drew on care and support, and unpaid carers who receive statutory assessments, measured against local and national standards. There were different sampling approaches undertaken, to ensure people more likely to experience inequity were sampled, for example, through Thematic Case Reviews and Making Safeguarding Personal Reviews.

Staff and leaders explained how the audit process was based on peer reviews. Audits were undertaken by managers outside of the worker’s direct line management hierarchy. For general casework, reviewers were paired and met to discuss findings. This built peer-to-peer relationships and knowledge transfer between managers from different teams. For example, good practice in contingency planning in mental health had spread across the whole directorate by this method. Specialist Practitioners played a key role in practice assurance and supported the PSW. This had expanded audit activity to include multi-agency audit frameworks where work was audited by managers from the various agencies involved in people’s support.

North Tyneside used information about risks, performance, inequalities, and outcomes to inform its adult social care strategy and plans, to allocate resources, and to deliver the actions needed to improve care and support outcomes for people and local communities.

Partners told us there were strong joint-working arrangements in place with the local authority, including coproductive approaches to strategic planning. Resources were pooled where appropriate, and innovative ways of working were explored. Senior leaders had a clear vision for the future and how they wanted to achieve it.

Senior leaders told us adult social care strategic plans aligned with legislation and statutory guidance, the Council’s Corporate plan, and multi-agency strategies to which the council was a participant, for example, Better Health and Wellbeing for All 2023-2030; Ageing Well 2020-2025; Autism Strategy 2021-2026; and North Tyneside Commitment to Carers 2024-2029. The local authority’s priorities for 2024-2025 were detailed in the Directorate Action Plan which was monitored corporately through quarterly progress updates to the Corporate Performance Team, Senior Leadership Team, and the elected Lead Member for Adult Social Care.

The Adult Social Care Strategy 2025-2026 outlined the aims and objectives for the department over the next 2 years, setting targets to continue improvement during the on-going restructure of the directorate, whilst preparing for a new strategy to take the local authority through to the end of the decade. The strategy was developed using information from the JSNA, demographic data, and from locally gathered information such as community mapping and feedback from provider forums and people with lived experience.

Staff and leaders told us key themes for 2025-2026 included supporting social inclusion and meaningful activities as drivers of prevention and efficiency of interactions with people to reduce handoffs and repetition in processes, improving customer service, and developing the range and quality of community-based support to meet people’s needs.

The local authority had arrangements to maintain the security, availability, integrity and confidentiality of data, records, and data management systems. Online information and advice were available on cyber-security, and a statement of compliance explained how personal data was collected, stored, used, and destroyed. Information sharing protocols were agreed by the local authority and supported secure sharing of personal information in ways which protected people’s rights and privacy.

Staff had data protection training, and the local authority had an information governance team and Caldicot Guardian with oversight of this. A Caldicott Guardian is the senior person responsible for protecting the confidentiality of people’s health and care information.