Bristol City Council: local authority assessment

There was an inclusive and positive culture of continuous learning and improvement at the local authority. Local authority staff had ongoing access to learning and support, so Care Act duties were delivered safely and effectively. Senior leaders told us a strong training and professional development offer had been developed in partnership with other areas of the council and externally including children's services, housing and neighbouring local authorities. Senior leaders were committed to learning and sharing the voice of people with lived experience and they included presentations from these people at their adult social care conferences which were held every six months.

The local authority had launched the ‘Adult Learning Hub’, bringing together all strands of learning, development, and innovation into one place to make it easily accessible to practitioners. Staff were aware of a programme of mandatory training but were also offered additional training around specific issues, such as anti-racism, anti-hate training and risk. Feedback was managers generally supported and facilitated staff to attend additional training which staff said was interesting, informative and useful to their roles.

There was support for continuous professional development to ensure staff remained competent. A number of staff had gone through or were part of the social work apprenticeship scheme. Staff told us they had enjoyed this, were supported throughout this and once qualified, the support continued. Staff were encouraged to consider professional development in other areas such as becoming an Approved Mental Health Practitioner or Best Interests Assessor.

OTs fed back that the training offer for newly qualified OTs had greatly improved and now replicated the assessed and supported year in employment (ASYE) programme provided to their social work colleagues. They also spoke highly of the local authority OT apprenticeship programme. For staff who did not want to qualify as a social worker or OT, they found there were limited options available to progress within adult social care, although ongoing training in areas of professional interest was encouraged.

Some black ASYE staff reported passing the social work training was hard and it had been noted the pass rate among black staff was lower. Consequently, the local authority was undertaking some work to understand this better and ensure this group of staff were being suitably supported and not being discriminated against.

The Workforce Development Team, under the leadership of the PSW provided leadership and support to students, learners, practitioners and teams in different areas, including in relation to the Care Act, Mental Capacity Act and safeguarding.

A supervision policy set out clear standards around the quality of supervision. Staff described an environment which was supportive and caring. This included support from line managers and colleagues in teams and across the wider service. Supervision was used as an effective tool to manage wellbeing, discuss complex cases and to encourage learning, development and career progression. Some staff stated that additional support around clinical supervision would be beneficial especially for those teams who were exposed to cases of a more challenging nature such as safeguarding.

The local authority had undertaken the co-design of the co-production policy and process for adult social care with a working group comprising people with lived expertise and community organisation representatives (the co-production policy group were now known as the co-production advisory group). This was described by everyone as a solid piece of co-production, fully supported by the local authority. The new policy had been formally signed off in December 2024. The policy and process were to be used as guidance for local authority officers to support the embedding of co-production throughout both the commissioning and assessment pathways. Bristol had also led a regional co-production network and shared experience, learning and advice about co-production at a national conference.

The co-production advisory group told us they hoped the new co-production policy would stop co-production from being ad-hoc. The group were not clear how the impact and outcomes of the new co-production policy would be measured, or their role in this evaluation, however they hoped they would be involved. Feedback from the local authority was that more work was planned with the group in the immediate future which would help to clarify further plans. The group commented they felt co-production could be better communicated and celebrated at the local authority.

The Commissioning Team told us there was a commitment to embedding co-production into commissioning activity and a much greater awareness of the value of this following the development of the co-production policy. The team gave examples of co-production with the HIV community, people with a learning disability and for people with mental health needs. Information and intelligence from people had directly influenced commissioning activity, for example the recommissioning of a specialist HIV prevention service.

Partners described good co-production between the local authority and organisations within the voluntary and community sector, and there was a commitment from the local authority to support the sector. For example, they described how the local authority ensured they recognised the voice of people with lived experiences when developing new strategies.

There were some good examples of how co-production was being used, however this continued to be developed in some areas. For example, co-production had not been a feature of some of the Technology Enabled Care Hub trials of new equipment and this had been identified as one area for improvement. The Technology Enabled Care Hub told us about plans to better gather customer feedback with satisfaction questionnaires planned and a focus group to better hear the voice of people with lived experience.

The local authority was now using a software data tool to produce reports. Senior leaders explained how the teams were involved in the development of data reports ensuring the data being produced accurately reflected the needs within individual teams. This was an area of continued improvement and development. For example, some DoLS and transitions reports were currently still under development. There was a clear process of development and testing of reports to ensure they met bespoke reporting requirements. The data and performance team provided bespoke training to teams on how to get the best out of their reporting, designing the reporting functions to be accessible.

The local authority worked collaboratively with people and partners to actively promote and support innovative and new ways of working that improved people's social care experiences and outcomes. Staff feedback was the technology team were approachable and provided relevant training and support for staff when needed. Staff were able to keep abreast of new developments in technology that could support people. For example, there were several assistive apps being used in relation to care and support of people and this area of technology was accelerating quickly.

Staff and leaders engaged with external work, including research, and embedded evidence-based practice across the organisation. The local authority took part in a Research and Governance Programme for adult social care and health. They described how the development programme supported applied research projects and advanced degrees, such as PhDs. This helped ensure practice in the organisation was informed by the latest research.

The local authority learned from people’s feedback about their experiences of care and support, and feedback from staff and partners. This informed strategy, improvement activity and decision making at all levels.

The local authority routinely collected data about complaints and compliments. This was reported through their quality assurance framework, which twice annually included a thematic review. They shared that learning from complaints and compliments had increased their awareness of the value placed by people on high quality, skilled intervention of staff, but also reiterated the struggles some people had had getting timely assessment or support.

The local authority used feedback from people to improve service delivery. One example given was when a complaint was received from a family member about a social work practitioner, the investigation found that record keeping was not of the standard they would expect. As a result of the complaint, the procedures for record keeping and support planning were reviewed, and practitioners received the training, supervision and guidance needed to meet the requirements of practice standards and regulations. It was also agreed that the service area should undertake further regular audits of case records to ensure quality of recording and timely action. 

Staff involved in quality assurance felt the findings of practice audits demonstrated good practice in assessments across all services. They said that most assessments and support plans had been audited and scored 80% or above, against their internal framework which was good. Their findings had been supported by feedback sought from a small number of people with lived experience.

The local authority held staff briefings so staff could hear the latest updates and information and feedback, for example, in relation to the transformation of services. Leaders recognised they could do more to gather staff feedback and staff were overall confident to challenge and raise issues were relevant.

There were a range of opportunities for practitioners to share learning and practice, and to hold reflective discussions. This included reflective practice sessions, feeding into the Social Work Board, and different practitioner drop-in sessions. Practitioners also shared their examples of good practice at the Adult Social Care Conferences, the most recent example was about the support provided to newly qualified social workers and their managers.

The local authority provided data concerning compliments and complaints. There were 593 contacts made by the public regarding adult social care in 2023-2024, 53% were compliments and 28% complaints with the remainder either concerns or representations. Among the complaints, the quality or non-delivery of services was the biggest area. Of the 105 complaints formally made, 35 were not upheld and 29 upheld. There was a comparative increase in the time taken to respond, 49% were responded to within 15 days in 2021-2022 against 40% in 2023-2024. There were practical examples given of how upheld complaints led to changes in service provision, including improvements in communication between services and to unpaid carers.

The local authority had 10 detailed investigations undertaken by the Local Government Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) in early 2023/24. The average number of investigations for this authority type is 4. Of the local authority complaints investigated by the LGSCO, 90% were upheld (which means the LGSCO found fault) which is high when compared to the average rate of 76.07% in similar authorities. In 100% of cases the LGSCO were satisfied. However, the local authority had successfully implemented recommendations, although 40% of these were late remedies which was higher than the average of 21.38% across all other local authorities.