Agenda item

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 the opportunity arose to change the vehicles, but this would depend on costs as the service was in deficit.

A Member commented that it was good to see the increase in the service and referred to capacity to deliver meals at a reasonable time and at an increased level to balance the budget.  The Director of Social Services said that once there was a balanced budget they could then look to further increase the number of meals delivered and potentially employ additional staff and increase the number of delivery vehicles so that meals could be delivered at a reasonable time.  The aim was to first balance the budget then try to increase the uptake of meals again to get to a surplus.  With the possibility of the number of meals decreasing following Covid, the Director said that at this point in time the service was managing with the existing staff and workload.  Seasonal reductions would be monitored and planned into the budget to continue to run the service and if possible to expand the service going forward.

A Member referred to care home complexes spread around the borough and enquired if engagement with residents of the complexes could be undertaken to encourage groups of people to buy into the service as a number of meals could be delivered to one central location.  Consideration could also be given to discounts on the number of meals ordered.  The Director of Social Services said that options for developing the service were being explored such as a sandwich service that people may want in addition to the meal they received. 

In response to a Member’s question regarding operating the service as a business in its own right, the Director of Social Services said that consideration had been given to move the service to a social firm model at some point in the future but the service was running at a deficit at the moment and it could be a couple of years before the service was in a comfortable position to go down this route.

A Member referred to the cash flow forecast and enquired regarding the central costs figure.  The Director of Social Services explained that it was difficult to become a commercial organisation with these central costs which included legal services, accountancy, financial and organisational development services.  Moving to a different type of model such as a social model or to get a third sector organisation to run it as a business then that could provide the opportunity to reduce those central costs in particular.

The Committee AGREED to recommend that the report be accepted and endorse Option 1; namely that Members scrutinise the report and evaluate the recommendations for the long term forward planning of the service (section 6.4)