Wednesday 19 April 2017 at Hammersmith Town Hall
Present:
- Tara Flood (Chair)
- David Isaac
- Martin Doyle
- Patricia Quigley
- Ramona Williams
- Victoria Brignell
- Jane Wilmot
- Ali Buhdeima
Apologies:
- Kate Betteridge
- Mike Gannon
Also present:
- Cllr Sue Fennimore, Cabinet Member for Social Inclusion
- Cllr Vivienne Lukey, Cabinet Member for Health & Adult Social Care
- Cllr Ben Coleman, Cabinet Member for Commercial Revenue & Resident Satisfaction
- Kim Dero, Interim Chief Executive
- Milan Ognjenovic, Principal Performance & Information Officer Insight & Analytics
H&F Officer Support:
- Peter Smith, Kevin Caulfield and Fawad Bhatti, Policy & Strategy Team
1. Introduction
Tara had spoken to most commissioners and had added another agenda item today where each commissioner would be given around 2 minutes to offer their views on how things are progressing and if there are any gaps, e.g. in our evidence gathering.
Cllr Coleman and Kim Dero attended part of the meeting. Kim asked commissioners to hold her to account and assured them that disability will be considered as a key issue. Cllr Coleman spoke about his previous work supporting disabled children’s charities.
2. Minutes of 6th meeting
Previous minutes were agreed as an accurate record.
Review of Actions
Action: Kevin to contact Anna Waterman with regards the draft Social Isolation & Loneliness Strategy
Survey to be circulated to Deaf Plus
This has been done
Action: Tara to meet Bathsheba Mall about the DPC fitting in to the HASCSI PAC work programme
This meeting was scheduled for Friday 21st April. Other commissioners are welcome to come along.
Survey to be circulated by Deaf Plus to their clients and contacts.
This should have happened.
Clarification around Deaf Plus funding from H&F Council.
Cllr Fennimore advised that the council is currently funding Deaf Plus around £12k per year until 2018 for a specific project on living with hearing impairment. Deaf Plus have not applied for any ‘Fast Track’ grants for a while, however the council would welcome them to apply. Therefore, the impression that the council does not fund them is incorrect.
Action: Jane to submit questions to SNPF on health care (commissioning) issues.
Jane will be meeting SNPF in May.
3. DPC staff and resident survey
Milan gave a presentation to commissioners which included a headline overview on disability in H&F and some early findings from staff and residents’ survey responses. The residents survey will remain open until mid June.
Action: Milan to circulate presentation.
Jane asked if actual data (as collected by services) was available to look at.
Milan advised that different council services collected information from residents around disability (as part of statutory requirements) when they access services but certain data was not shared between departments. So e.g. Adult Social Care and Housing data would be difficult to share, bearing in mind data protection.
Jane asked if it was possible to correlate blue badge holders with other data, e.g. issue of parking tickets. We can then use data to infer if there are not enough disabled parking bays or if there is any abuse of the system.
Tara asked if the council knew about challenges to parking tickets. Kevin said it would be good to find out overall how disabled people interacted when in contact with the council.
Discussion on the identified barrier ‘limitations around accessibility of home care, given restrictions on adaptations to some housing’, Jane advised accessibility of home care and restrictions on adaptations were based on different criteria so were separate barriers.
Action: Milan to separate accessibility of home care and restrictions on adaptations and provide further information on each.
Kim highlighted the 385 people with learning difficulties registered with GPs, which she felt was low. Milan advised that more reliable figures could be obtained from DWP. Ramona also felt that 840 registered blind people was low and should be more than 1, 000. Milan advised that the figure was for 2015 so could be more now.
Commissioners discussed the issues experienced by disabled people as a result of DLA changing to PIP, problems during assessment and drops in payments leading to real hardship for people that they knew. Tara was aware of the anger across the disability community towards DWP.
Peter reminded commissioners that they can make recommendations for central government to respond to as well as for the council.
Questions were also asked about the staff who responded (86), whether they were frontline staff, the percentage of staff who responded who said they knew about or were involved with coproduction (26%) and which departments the staff were from.
Action: Milan to find out more about staff responders, their departments / services and whether they were frontline staff.
Kevin added 86 was a relatively good response from staff compared to the one for residents (147). David commented that co-production must work from upper management to frontline staff. Cllr Coleman suggested re-surveying frontline staff. Tara said that staff were given the option to respond anonymously and that we should try to complete the analysis before the next meeting.
Action: Milan to provide final summary analysis of surveys for the May meeting
4. DPC timetable update
The commission webpage is up and running. SNPF had done an easy read version of the ‘What does success look like’ document. Victoria had organised some media coverage. David was recently interviewed by Fiona Anderson a freelance journalist. Thanks were noted for Fiona for conducting the interview.
Tara proposed a small working group (like the one for events) to look at shaping the DPC final report, the ‘Final Report Working Group’. Victoria felt we should start drafting in May. Jane agreed that we can consider the layout and shape of the document as soon as and fill in the detail later. Inclusion London has also offered help with the report and we will take up their offer to facilitate an initial session. Discussion then on how long the report should be. Learning from other commissions, a short ‘punchy’ report with short, medium and long term recommendations was considered best.
Action: Tara to email commissioners about the Final Report Working Group
Action: Kevin to circulate proposed headings to interested Commissioners
In terms of council processes, Kevin informed colleagues of proposed the following proposed timeline:
July 2017 - Kevin, Tara and Peter to attend a Senior Leadership Team (SLT) meeting to discuss the DPC’s headline proposals with directors.
Early September 2017 - draft final report to be considered by the HASCSI PAC before Political Cabinet.
November 2017 – final report to Full Cabinet.
Early 2018 – public launch of the final report.
Tara stressed it was very important to engage with the council’s decision making process to ensure that we have the best chance at getting support for our report recommendations.
Tara informed Commissioners that along with Kevin she had met with the West London Collaborative (funded by the West London Mental Health Trust) and that it would be good for them to talk to the Commission about co-production challenges and misunderstandings. There is also a London Co-Production Forum which next meets in June. Any learning from both will help us frame our recommendations around co-production.
5. Public consultation events
The events planning group had met every fortnight a flyer for the first event was circulated by Kevin.
Saturday 29th April, 2pm at St Paul’s Centre.
Any Commissioners attending were asked to come at 1pm when they will be briefed by Kevin. Cllr Stephen Cowan will also be speaking. ‘Partnership working’ will be the phrase used rather than ‘co-production’. Commissioners were talked through the draft programme and assigned key roles for the event, including welcome and registration, facilitation and summing up. A graphic facilitator was also coming to summarise the discussions visually supported by a text version.
Cllr Fennimore recommended sending the invitation again to all councillors. Jane said it would be good if the councillors could ask disabled residents in their wards to attend as well. Tara proposed that all commissioners help in putting up posters and get as many people to attend.
Action: Commissioners to advise of their availability by email.
6. Six month review
Tara informed Commissioners that this was the extra item on the agenda and was an opportunity for people to share their personal views and respond to the following questions.
How are things going after 6 months?
Any gaps in evidence and information?
Any thoughts on the final report?
Any early thoughts on recommendations?
Ramona – Relatively good so far. Some of the data presented doesn’t appear consistent. Bit early to talk about the final report as we need to further investigate the information we have. Has concerns about the Sensory Impairment Service as people get limited support when they move into the area because of the lack of staff.
Patricia – Meetings have gone well with the information presented really opening her eyes. Would like David Burns to talk more about housing for disabled people. Disabled people who lose benefits / are made homeless can have a total breakdown in their lives.
Martin – Has sent written feedback to Tara. Thought it was going well and the barriers for disabled people are starting to be understood by everyone. It would be good for Commissioners to meet with people with learning difficulties and high needs and for service providers to explain what is happening with funding (there is a forum where this happens). There was further discussion about isolation and the lack of support for young people.
David – Wasn’t sure if the speakers we’ve heard so far have fully helped us understand how co-production works in practice. No real working role model to learn from. Are we supposed to be highlighting issues for disabled people? Are we setting up a coproduction structure across the council? There have been lots of faults (e.g. housing) that have been identified but how does this help with co-production? Very happy to support the Commission but feels we haven’t done anything fundamentally that improves the lives of disabled residents.
Victoria – Agreed with David that she’s still not clear how coproduction works in practice so more practical information on how council processes would change would be good. We need to ensure people are excited about our final report by including immediate headline grabbing tangible changes as well. Even if we devise a strategy or framework for co-production, how can we ensure disabled people will take part in it? There are physical and financial barriers to their involvement so longer term resources need to be in place.
Ali – Felt the Commission is going OK but doesn’t yet understand how it will improve people’s lives. His first language is BSL so struggles with emails. Interpreters have been good but written English (emails etc.) is a barrier for him. Can read but ‘high level’ English is an issue. We need to ask people who will come to our event for their emails. Tara said the final report will be accessible and an easy read version will be done.
Jane – Agreed with all the previous comments but was concerned about being able to recruit enough disabled people to the cause. Has spoken to people who have proposed that we don’t go all in for co-production from the start. It’s a bigger challenge to get disabled people together in a room, some may only attend once and could expect others to do the work. We all have to step up to the plate and professionals will have to be more flexible. It seems easier to get officers involved in coproduction but the challenge is the continued involvement of disabled people throughout the process.
Tara – It was always going to be a challenge to work strategically as everyone has a horror story to tell from their experiences. We need to get a fundamental culture change at the Council which will not happen overnight. Beyond the life of this commission, officers and disabled residents need to continue to work together and we’ll try to make sure the support is there to keep people involved.
7. Dates of future meetings in 2017
Thurs 18 May, Dawes Road Hub, Fulham 5 45 – 7.45 pm
Mon 19 June, Dawes Road Hub, Fulham
Tues 11 July, Small Hall, Hammersmith Town Hall
Tues 12 Sept, Courtyard Room, Hammersmith Town Hall