Delivering Improvements
Lancashire is driven by a "prove it" model of self scrutiny and the Dignity Campaign benefits from this approach.
Considerable resources have been given to the monitoring and compliance aspect of the council's contracts service to ensure the dignity agenda is delivered in practice. Contract monitoring officers for example undertake widespread questionnaires of individual services users and conduct confidential one-to-one interviews with those receiving services. This demonstrates to service users that their voice can be heard in a confidential, independent and appropriate manner.
In June 2009 a report was completed into "Quality Assurance: Outcomes and Adult Procedures" with specific reference to reviews, dignity, respect and safeguarding. This work was the culmination of a six month assessment/review exercise undertaken by an independent Complaints and Intelligence Officer. Within this exercise a "dignity audit", was conduced by volunteer staff members, to ascertain how valued people felt. The report states "183 responses provided a wealth of information about adult social care, health, transport and wider community provision which has been widely cascaded within and between partner agencies to inform communication, commissioning and service provision".
The audit identified a number of issues related to dignity being compromised and set out a series of recommendations: the importance of staff development processes in embedding the requirement for dignity and respect, the need for increased publicity in a variety of formats and the importance of service heads in maintaining the profile of dignity and respect. The findings were shared with the "investigators" and cascaded to staff and service areas, with the report being circulate across the entire Personal Care and Commissioning audience. Currently work is underway to repeat this audit exercise in order to evaluate how well services have responded and addressed these matters.
Another similar exercise has been undertaken to consider the quality of "Transitions" work within adult services, an area of provision that is challenging to many authorities. Discrete one to one interviews took place with those who had recently experienced Lancashire's Transitions service when a questionnaire was completed. This considers the information supplied and whether individuals felt they were treated with dignity. This report again was an exercise undertaken independently of the service itself and confirmed that each of those sampled and spoken to "felt that they had been treated with dignity and respect".
The council, on an ongoing basis, undertakes extensive work evaluating compliments, comments and complaints with systems evolving to accommodate joint health and social care reporting and the role of mediation. This includes the development of joint protocols and extensive management training. Feedback is routinely sought following the delivery of services via the "your views count" leaflet. Questions relate to the customer experience and the CQC outcomes. Whilst there is not a specific dignity question, feedback is sought on the question of having been treated with respect when dealing with Adult and Community Services with a satisfaction level of 99% achieved -the highest positive feedback reported. (See page 21 of the Adult Social Care Complaints and Representations Annual Report 2008/09)
Such monitoring and independent evaluation demonstrates how the council is been keen to evaluate the impact of the dignity and respect agenda and how it is achieving change in practice. Standard monitoring of performance will continue with plans underway to repeat the Dignity Audit in 2010.