Issue - meetings

Consideration was given to the report of the Head of Adult Services which was presented to inform on the transition of the Community Meals (CM) service and progress made since transition from the Community Services Directorate to the Social Services Directorate.

The Director of Social Services spoke to the report and highlighted the main points contained therein.

A Member requested clarity on the actual numbers of drivers and vans.  The Director of Social Services clarified that two drivers went out at the same time in one van and subsequently the fixed term post had reduced and three drivers had been allowed to finish. Through redeployment, an additional driver had been used to support the service going forward.

A Member commented that with the significant 36% increased demand for the service was there capacity in the service to take it to where the Directorate needed it to be to offset any budget pressures.  The Director of Social Services said the vision was to develop a model to make it work within the Community Options Service, whereby   people with learning disabilities or mental health issues would go out with the drivers and learn new skills in terms of delivering the meals.  In order to continually develop the model and service there was a need to understand the underlying cost to deliver the service to look at employing additional staff if demand for the service increased further.  A full budget report would be presented to the Scrutiny Committee when the information became available.

In response to a Member’s question regarding hot and frozen meals, the Director of Social Services said the service provided both hot and frozen meals, often hot meals during the week and frozen meals at the weekends. Potentially an additional service such as sandwiches could be introduced in the future. 

A Member enquired if hospitals had been approached to promote this service to patients being discharged.  The Director of Social Services said the service was currently in the process of rebranding and marketing, however, the pandemic had slowed this process down, but social workers were promoting the delivery of an in-house service.  When patients were discharged from hospital they were offered community meals rather than obtaining meals from the private sector. 

A Member felt that rebranding was a good idea to make it more commercial and could encourage those people who could afford to pay to take up the service and raise revenue. The Director of Social Services said there was a need to be competitive with the private sector, but at this point in time the focus was to identify the full costs to run the service and look at opportunities to develop the service going forward and be much more commercially aware of the market to be successful.

In relation to resilient budget monitoring a Member enquired if the use of electric vehicles had been explored with the Community Services Directorate.  The Director of Social Services confirmed that discussions had taken place and would be further explored when  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6