The Adult Care Services Cabinet Panel were scheduled to meet on 4 July 2025 to discuss the approval of a Day Services Strategy, review the Adult Social Care performance, and consider the national context for Adult Social Care.

Day Services Strategy

The panel was asked to consider and recommend to the Cabinet the approval of the Day Service Strategy (2025-2030). The strategy was developed following two phases of engagement with people who use the service, their families and carers, potential future users, and other stakeholders.

The Phase 1 co-production process highlighted several themes, including:

• The opportunity to develop and grow to meet own personal goals
• Being active and improving wellbeing
• Increasing or maintaining independence
• Personal choice over how time is spent
• Having the chance to experience new things with peers
• Having a sense of belonging and feeling understood
• The desire to actively engage with the communities that people live in
• The importance of a clear structure and a safe, familiar environment

The Phase 2 co-production engaged with 276 people and explored topics such as buildings, transport, people with profound and multiple learning disabilities, people with behaviours of concern, young people, and older people including those living with dementia.

The strategy includes eight underlying principles:

• Embed diversity and inclusion in everything
• Focus on quality and consistency
• Offer value for money
• Focus on prevention and outcomes
• Offer variety, independence, and flexibility
• Continually learn and develop
• Act sustainably
• Co-produce our services

It also sets out nine strategic objectives, including:

• Expanding the service offer to provide specialist support, extended opening hours, outreach, and support for carers.
• Developing and implementing a new programme of activities that is delivered to a consistently high standard across the county, provides people with a service that is personalised to them, and helps people live Connected Lives.
• Ensuring people have access to a range of travel options that emphasise efficiency, flexibility, and independence.
• Creating an identity which ensures teams are easily recognisable in Hertfordshire and people know what teams do.
• Increasing the ability to provide resilience in the social care system.
• Ensuring teams have a skilled, caring, efficient and values driven staff team who feel valued.
• Ensuring all buildings are welcoming, multi-functional, of a good standard, and pleasant places to be.
• Achieving value for money and an efficient use of resources in all aspects of our service.
• Improving how officers collect, manage, and use data to monitor performance and make evidence-based decisions

A 12-week public consultation on the strategy ran from 20 May 2024. The majority of respondents were supportive of the strategy, with an average of 73% saying the objectives were important to them.

Respondents also:

reiterated the importance of day services to them and their families and said that they would be concerned about any cuts to funding. Several respondents also provided positive feedback complimenting the service they currently receive and praising day service staff.

If the Cabinet approves the strategy, officers will review service provision across the county and create a delivery plan, consulting users and stakeholders on any significant changes.

An Equality Impact Assessment (EqIA) was undertaken, which identified that the implementation of the Strategy may have some negative impact on people with protected characteristics¹, however one of the key focuses of the Strategy is to ensure Diversity and Inclusion is embedded in everything we do, and there will be work with staff teams on values and providing culturally appropriate care.

Adult Social Care Performance

The panel was asked to review the performance of adult social care (ACS) for the fourth quarter of the 2024/25 financial year (January 2024 – March 2024).

Key points from the report included:

• New requests for support rose to 33,641, a 2% increase from 2023-24 and a 20% rise from pre-COVID levels.
• Adults waited an average of 12 days for their first needs assessment, down from 23 days in 2024, and carers waited 19 days, down from 27 days.
• Over 27,000 adults are supported with services, and 15,210 of those adults are receiving long-term care, with the average cost of a long-term care package being £872.
• Safeguarding concerns reported reached 8,665, a decrease of 2% from the previous year, with 30% progressing to an enquiry (2,780 cases).
• Adult Social Care received 6,404 Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) applications, an increase of 509 from the previous year, representing an 8.6% rise.

The ACS Connect and Prevent programme is supporting the service to discover new opportunities and improve existing interventions, such as enabling style care, to better identify and support carers and keep people independent.

The report also included updates and key links to the latest Adult Social Care Outcome Framework (ASCOF) publication page, the Adult Social Care Client Level Dataset, and the national results for the Survey of Adult Carers and the Adult Social Care Survey for 2023-24.

Adult Social Care - National Context

The panel was asked to note the current national policy context for Adult Social Care, in particular:

• The Independent Commission into Adult Social Care
• The Fair Pay Agreement for Adult Social Care
• The NHS Ten Year Plan

The Independent Commission into Adult Social Care, chaired by Baroness Louise Casey, will report in two phases. The first phase, reporting in 2026, will identify critical issues facing adult social care and set out recommendations for effective reform and improvement in the medium term. Phase 2 will focus on longer-term recommendations for the transformation of adult social care.

The Government's Employment Rights Bill includes provision to implement a Fair Pay Agreement (FPA) for adult social care, which will be agreed through a Negotiating Body made up of employer and worker representatives. The legislation allows for the Secretary of State to direct the Negotiating Body to decide on the renumeration of social care workers, terms and conditions of employment, and any other specified matters relating to employment as a social care worker.

The NHS Ten Year Plan, likely to be published in July 2025, will show how Government wants the NHS to change to deliver the three key shifts: from hospital to community, from treatment to prevention, and from analogue to digital. The plan is likely to formalise changes that are already underway for Integrated Care Boards².

Regular updates on the development of these proposals will be shared with the Panel, and work has begun on a new 3-year plan for Adult Care Services, which will come to the Panel in January.