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Short Reviews of Social Work Services in Scottish Local Authorities

Dundee City Council

Overview

Dundee has made significant progress in many areas of its services. The Council has to provide services to tackle the consequences of relatively high rates of unemployment and poverty. These demands have been increased by the effects of drug and alcohol misuse which have had a serious effect, particularly on families with children.

The Council's achievements include:

• increased services for people with learning difficulties;
• increasing numbers of people receiving services for drug and alcohol misuse;
• in partnership with the NHS, a relatively quick development of a range of services for drug misusers;
• an innovative pilot project of video recording of interviews of children in child protection enquiries;
• significant reductions in offending by young people who have been involved in the CHOICE project programme;
• high rates of children placed with foster carers and with friends or relatives, in the face of significant demands; and
• successfully introducing Free Personal Care.

The Council needs to take urgent action to:

• improve the educational attainment of children and young people who are looked after;
• reduce the number of children and young people looked after who have three or more placements; and
• produce accurate information on performance against standards for time intervals for Children's Hearings (in particular, improve performance on standard 3 to ensure that 75% of reports are submitted on time).

The authority should also give priority to:

• increasing the number of, and monitoring, carers assessments;
• proposals for joint working to improve and develop the way equipment and adaptations are provided;
• continuing to develop services to deal with drug misuse and prepare protocols for dealing with families which have drug problems;
• extra measures to reduce staff vacancies in children's services;
• preparing care plans for all children and young people who are looked after, including those who live at home;
• developing and maintaining accurate throughcare and aftercare information on young people who were looked after; and
• concentrating efforts to replace the ageing workforce by recruiting staff to both fieldwork and management posts and promoting forward planning;

Community Care

Services for older people

The number of people in residential homes and the number of people in special needs housing fell between 2000 and 2002. The number of people receiving home care also reduced. Following a reduction in 2001, the number receiving 20 hours or more a week increased in 2002 but is still below 2000 figures.

The Council increased early supported discharge from hospital and rapid response services in 2002 by 100 hours, dealing with twice as many people. Services are becoming mainstream to respond to waiting time and discharge pressures. Crisis care is available to all groups but is mostly used by older people.

Shopping and laundry services are well developed. People are also supported to do their own shopping. A Best Value review of home care shows that the Council is meeting performance targets.

Intensive home care is provided through care management according to the number of interventions that people need. 24 hour packages are provided in small numbers and for short periods.

Short breaks support take a number of forms - so that people can use community facilities, home from home, holiday services as well as residential and respite at home. The Council has put resources into home-from-home day care, day respite and evening home respite, which include services targeted at dementia care.

Joint working and planning focus on developing local areas and bringing processes and management arrangements together. Training for SSA is bringing groups of staff together, with a focus on delivery.

The Council has successfully introduced Free Personal Care after identifying which parts are free and which are chargeable. Estimates have been matched by demand. Free Personal Care is now part of the home care system.

Services for people with learning disabilities

The programme to resettle people from hospital into the community is being completed. People have been moved to a specially-built unit with nursing care, their own staff and a service to support community links, to supported accommodation and to supported tenancies. The Council will re-assess the situation and put a new 'final phase' plan in place in time to meet the hospital closure target of 2005.

A range of community services is available with an emphasis on access to community resources. Everyone who has been re-settled has access to 10 hours each week of Capability Scotland's 'enabler service'. 92 people are in supported employment, paid or unpaid with social firms and 400 are using facilities at colleges. The Council is reviewing the needs of mentally disordered offenders. It is preparing a database to link with SSA, but people with learning disabilities do not want this.

Services for people with physical disabilities

Dundee is evaluating two tenders to provide support services related to Direct Payments. A complicating factor is that some people expect that payments should be far more than the existing cost of services. There is a risk that Direct Payments will take investment from direct services to fund supervision of service.

68 deaf-blind people and 44 hearing-impaired people are receiving a service. These do not include older people who have not identified themselves within these specific categories. Specialist services are provided through Dundee Society for the Visually Impaired and the Society for the Deaf. The Council monitors their activity service level agreements. An action plan is being put in place for sensory loss services.

There is a three-tier system of high, medium and low priority for referrals for equipment and adaptations. Waiting times for equipment are improving. Each occupational therapist has a budget and can authorise up to 200 for each item. For more costly items, people can try out equipment before managers authorise it. Delays in providing adaptations are considered 'outside of the control' of the local authority, and although charges are no longer made for equipment, the Council does not provide items costing less than 25.

Services for people with mental health difficulties

The number of people receiving a service for mental health problems and dementia increased gradually between 1999-2000 and 2001-2002.

Community mental health teams are linked closely with primary care and groups of GP practices. With health partners, there is an assertive outreach team and acute response service. SAMH has a Community Support Team with no waiting list.

A Mental Health Review throughout Tayside has confirmed the prevalence of mental ill-health. In Dundee this is increased by problems of poverty. The city has more than its share of services within Tayside. Within a Tayside mental health strategy, a multi-agency strategic planning group is preparing an action plan for developing services. The Council is identifying priority funding opportunities for leisure, recreation, education and supported employment initiatives.

The action plan includes a bid for funding for a forensic social work post in Murray Royal hospital to act as a bridge between the hospital and community. There are already working links between criminal justice and community care. A joint risk assessment is planned for mentally disordered offenders, with connections to criminal justice.

Tackling substance misuse

Following a reduction in the number of people receiving a service for substance misuse in 2000-2001, the number almost doubled in 2001-2002 from 96 to 187.

Under the chairmanship of the Director of Social Work, Dundee Drug and Alcohol Team has identified the imbalance between the services provided and what is needed. A new consultant psychiarist has been appointed and there is commitment to joint working, including developing SSA. Extra funding is going to rehabilitation services and support services to keep people in the community. STRADA or the drug and alcohol team provide training to an appropriate level.

The arrest referral scheme has dealt with 260 people from families misusing drugs who have been detained - 137 of them the main carers, with an average of three children in each family. Most have contact with children and family services and the nine Children and Family centres. The Aberlour outreach service also provides for parents who misuse drugs. Protocols for dealing with parents who misuse substances and their children are being developed in line with actions in the Council's Children's Services Plan 2002-2004.

Drug treatment and testing orders are available through a social work and health partnership. The Criminal Justice team delivered a service to 250 people in 2002 and carried out intensive work with 70. Overall a range of services has been developed in a relatively short time. The Zone project is helping people into employment and education. Of about 3,000 social enquiry reports, 70% involved drug and alcohol related offences. Drug misuse has also been tackled through 400 probation orders.

Joining up community care services with health

Progress in improved joint working is measured through the Joint Performance Information and Assessment Framework (JPIAF), which has been agreed by SWSI, Audit Scotland and NHS Scotland. Recent evaluation of the partnership's progress in the 5 areas of joint management, joint governance, human resources, joint resourcing and Single Shared Assessment suggest that the joint arrangements are well progressed and overall, satisfactory. The local partners were recommended to:

* ensure that the benefits of joint resourcing and joint management as envisaged under CCD7/2001 can be realised. Joint resourcing and joint management arrangements should apply not only to those services which are currently joint. There should also be an overarching framework and mechanism to drive Best Value and the re-design of the wider range of services for older people in order to meet the needs of individuals more effectively.

• develop an explicit timetable for the full implementation of their joint management structure.
• develop a joint policy on service/clinical governance to support services which are to be jointly or singly managed.
• develop a joint OD/training plan from the outline plan
• take forward their own action plan with clear responsibilities and deadlines to further develop their joint resourcing financial framework.
• arrange for assessors to access services across social work, health and housing.

On the ground, existing joint services include:

• the Community Mental Health Team for adults;
• Supported Discharge scheme;
• the White Top Centre; and
• joint care management for people with learning disabilities.

The White Top Centre provides distinct respite and day care services for people with profound and multiple learning disabilities. Dundee City Council Social Work Department manages the centre and provides the main resources for it. Tayside Primary Care provides nursing and therapeutic services. The Social Work Department's Learning Disabilities Care Management Team includes two seconded nurses and works closely with the community disabilities nursing team.

Proposed joint services include mental health teams for older people and augmented support for people leaving hospital.

The Council has restructured the home care service to provide a better service. Four local areas now have self managed teams working with primary care - though Dundee GPs do not have geographical areas.

Working with carers

A carers-led forum identified priorities for planning future services. They had an effect on development.

• Day care for older people with learning disabilities has been reshaped as day respite.
• Social work and Alzheimer staff have been co-located to the same office to give a complementary service.

Preparations are being made to update the carers' assessment as part of the Single Shared Assessment (SSA). Local training on putting SSA into place includes carers' rights to an assessment. Carers' assessment has been offered to 100% of the carers identified but there has been a low uptake attributed to:

• the belief that assessment does not necessarily guarantee the types of services that carers want; and
• the reluctance of carers to see themselves as clients.

Initiatives for carers include:

• the home-from-home project;
• simple changes to the way expenses forms are given out to make it easier for carers to claim;
• training in relation to committees and representation skills; and
• a conference each year for carers.

Children and Young People

Looked after children

The number of children and young people who are looked after has reduced from 410 in 2000 to 359 in 2002. This is due to:

• the strong emphasis on preventative work, with fieldwork services working together with other resources, such as the Choice project, the community support team and family centres; and
• an increase in options available to the Children's Reporter, so there is less need for compulsory measures such as the Compass Scheme and SACRO's Mediation and Reparation Scheme.

It is worrying that more than half of children and young people who are looked after had three or more placements in 2002. A reason for this is that using the short-term emergency residential unit and close support unit increases the number of moves. Sometimes the shortage of family placements has reduced the opportunity to match young people into care placements (matching would reduce the risk of the placement breaking down). These are essentially problems of designing and managing resources and there is a lot of room for improvement. At present, the rate is the highest in Scotland and the authority needs to take urgent steps to tackle this.

Fostering and adoption

The 24 young people waiting for a foster placement are in residential accommodation, in family placements waiting to move, and at home. All the children are over seven years of age, most are around 12 and 13. The supply of carers falls short of demand and boys are especially difficult to place.

The authority has invested in recruitment and has made carers central to their recruitment processes. A part-time worker has been dedicated to recruiting, and a recruitment group made up of staff and carers has developed a number of initiatives to attract more Dundee carers. They make good use of local media and carers have contributed to national campaigns. Some national independent fostering agencies have been actively recruiting in Dundee, and having to compete with agencies who pay much higher fees has made the job of recruiting and keeping carers more challenging.

In the year January to December 2002, 10 adoptions were granted (there were 11 adoptions in 2001, 15 in 2000, and nine in 1999). The number of adoptions granted is also influenced by court delays. Although a child is placed for adoption one year, he or she may not be adopted until two years later. These figures are for local authority adoptions only and do not include S22 adoptions.

13 children are in adoptive placements and are at various stages of the legal process. A further five children are in the process of being matched to placements. It is mainly children under five who are adopted. The Council is currently auditing the adoption service.

Educational attainment

In Dundee, only a quarter of 16 to 17 year olds who were no longer looked after attained Maths and English standard grade in 2001-2002 - the sixth lowest rate in Scotland - considerably lower than the 100% target set by the Scottish Executive in 1999 and the 84% of the S4 cohort in the authority attaining such grades. The Council is tackling this low performance by using a three-year education development plan. The plan outlines targets, including a 5% improvement in the number of children and young people who are looked after attaining Maths and English standard grade in 2002-2003, a further 5% increase by 2004-2005 and a 10% improvement in school attendance each year.

Other initiatives include:

• schools monitoring the performance of children and young people looked after and an identified teacher in every school links with social work;
• social workers attending parent-contact evenings;
• an outreach teacher being responsible for looked after children and arranging education for those who have been excluded;
• IT facilities and homework bases being provided for looked after children in residential units;
• foster carers being provided with computers and educational software for use by the children and young people placed with them;
• curriculum training being provided to social work staff;
• changing exclusion guidelines;
• education mentors helping young people in residential care;
• the home school support service including social workers who support the attendance of children;
• an education officer tackling the educational needs of looked after children; and
• joint training with staff in schools on meeting the needs of looked after children.

Given the very low performance of the authority in this area, and the extra measures described above, the Council should review its targets to ensure they are sufficiently stretching.

Every child and young person who is looked after has an education place (young people are not permanently removed from the school register when they are excluded) but they may have part-time provision while they are excluded. The Council is reviewing its exclusion guidelines. It needs to take steps to make sure that the level of provision for each looked after child is clearly recorded and that all children and young people who are looked after are receiving full-time education.

The Council tracks the attendance of all children including accommodated children and those on home supervision. Social work services are contacted if young people are not attending. The attendance review group assesses attendance and exclusion rates and identifies looked after children specifically.

Children and young people who are looked after but living at home do not have a formal care plan and there is no inter-agency review of their progress.

Throughcare and aftercare

In line with recommendations in its throughcare and aftercare strategy, the Council set up a specialist team in May 2003. A total of 55 young people over the minimum school leaving age stopped being looked after in 2002-2003. The Council submitted accurate statistical returns to the Executive for this period, on accommodation arrangements and destination. It has now changed its recording procedures to help future statistical returns on education, training and employment, and has drawn up a partnership agreement with Careers Scotland to improve opportunities for young people leaving care and to make it easier to track their progress.

A range of accommodation is in place for young people leaving care, including some developed in partnership with voluntary accommodation providers. These include a block of six bed-sits, based on a Foyer model where young people are encouraged to take up employment and training opportunities. A 'core and cluster' development gives the option of high intensity support of up to 30 hours a week. One member of the new team also has the job of developing the existing supporting lodgings scheme. From October 2003, the team's role will also include assessing and supporting all vulnerable homeless 16 and 17 year olds.

Mental health

There are local waiting lists for psychiatric and psychological services. There is a process of screening and prioritising children and young people who are referred for these services.

The pilot multi-disciplinary Primary Mental Healthcare Team has been enlarged and now provides a service across Dundee. It offers advice and counsultancy to field and residential workers and carers on meeting the needs of a child or young person with mental health issues. Members of the team also work with a small number of children and young people themselves.

Children and young people who are known to the Social Work Department and are affected by mental health issues are identified through the care planning and review process.

Inpatient services for children and young people will start again in November 2003 and access to day treatment services will be further developed.

Dundee City Council and Rossie School made a successful joint bid to the Intensive Support Fund, to buy in psychiatric and psychological services from NHS Tayside for children and young people in secure care.

The Council provides training for foster carers on areas like ADHD and the specific needs of children placed.

Child protection

Statistics suggest comparatively low rates of referral. This reflects local practice. Only after initial discussions between social work, the police, health and education (if appropriate) ,is it decided whether a case should be dealt with under child protection procedures. If this is decided, only then does a case count as a child protection referral. Otherwise, assessment of need and intervention are carried out using alternative procedures. Most child protection referrals proceed to a case conference. There are often network meetings and agreed inter-agency plans where formal child protection procedures are not pursued.

Following the Child Protection Review, various initiatives have been taken, including:

• a review of strategy and performance and the development of an audit tool to be shared with health services and other agencies;
• paying for an external report on the CPC;
• employing officers to work for the CPC to achieve the aims of the child protection reform programme at local level;
• setting up a Tayside group to identify functions to be handled on a joint basis, such as sharing information;
• developing a personal safety prevention programme to use in every school and nursery;
• a specialist nurse to provide training and awareness for health staff;
• improved ways of sharing information between the drug and alcohol team and child protection;
• a designated A&E liaison nurse who contacts other agencies if young people show signs of self harm;
• developing an inter-agency protocol on sexual exploitation; and
• sharing information between children and families and criminal justice about offenders who may be a risk to children.

Children with disabilities

The Social Work Department knows of 163 under 18 year olds with disabilities. At the moment, the department does not record all children affected by disability.

Services in Dundee for children with disabilities include the following:

• Respite services - access to them is through the multi-agency Shared Care Respite Group. There is a waiting list for family-based respite care. Respite services include Barnardo's family-based respite care scheme, 'Side by Side', NHS Tayside's new four-bed respite care unit for children with complex healthcare needs and the Social Work Department's purpose-built Gillburn Road Respite Unit. This unit provides regular, planned respite care for children with learning disabilities and physical disabilities.
• Out-of-school services, through Barnardo's Dundee Family Support Team and a range of groups who offer playschemes and activities for children with special needs.
• Support at home, provided to families and carers of children with a disability by a range of service providers on a 'spot-purchase' basis.
• 'Enabler' schemes, helping a number of young people to use mainstream services and activities.
• Individual packages of care, provided to a small number of children with very complex needs so that they can live at home and go to school in Dundee.
• Social worker's involvement in the future needs assessment process, where he or she is allocated to a young person.

New service developments include:

• a plan to improve family support, social care and 'enabler' services by buying in a local service to meet the needs of children with disabilities in Dundee;
• providing more individual packages of care for children with very complex needs (Aberlour is among the providers who will be asked to plan and sometimes provide comprehensive support at home, in the community and at school);
• two new posts to develop joint assessment and person-centred planning for children with complex needs (paid for through the Changing Children's Services Fund); and
• a pilot scheme in an area of Dundee for local area co-ordinators for people with learning disabilities (their job will cover access to services and planning for both children and adults).

Working of children's hearings

40% of referrals (two out of a total of five cases) were made within five working days of a case conference in 2001-2002 (standard 2). This low performance has been addressed and the next return is expected to be 100%.

Only 32% of reports were submitted within 20 working days of the date of request (standard 3). Reports are prioritised according to need. To speed up the allocation process, offence referrals are to be dealt with separately. The Council should take steps to improve on this, although allocation is hampered by the vacancy levels in care and assessment teams, which have made it necessary to screen and prioritise requests for reports.

No return was made on standard 15 (the local authority to give effect to supervision requirements with no condition of residence within 15 working days of date of issue by the children's hearings). Along with many other councils, Dundee City Council was not able to collect this information. It is believed all supervision requirements meet the target. A new database is being developed to yield accurate figures from 2003.

Youth Justice

The Asset assessment tool is used for all reports completed for children who persistently offend. The Council has introduced an electronic version so that workers and young people can now complete reports on-screen by workers and young people. Extra benefits are that the electronic version improves data collection and analysis, allowing for improved planning of services.

The Choice project works with persistent young offenders and also young people involved in substance misuse. It services the Fast Track pilot scheme linked to the children's hearing system. It provides risk assessment information and action plans in all reports. A recent joint exercise with Tayside Police showed a reduction in 50% of offending rates before and after the programme. Tayside Police help the project by informing staff if one of their clients is charged while on a programme.

A new NCH project has been bought in through the Fast Track initiative, which will expand the quality and range of programmes that are available for persistent offenders. This will include mentors to support young people after they finish their programme. This is likely to target around 40 young people a year. Includem and Scottish centres are used to put together crisis support packages (this is also as part of the Fast Track pilot scheme).

The Council has commissioned from SACRO a restorative justice service to divert young people from the children's hearings and to provide a service to children already in the hearing system, including those who are fast-tracked. This justice service includes routine evaluation of the views of children and young people, parents and victims, but so far the returns have been lower than expected. Restorative justice services also include a new service bought in from Victim Support. A victims youth crime officer will routinely contact all victims to identify their support needs - they are also told about the hearing system and given a chance to express their views.

Criminal Justice

Structure

Angus, Perth and Kinross and Dundee operate as a partnership for delivery of criminal justice services. Management direction for the partnership is provided by a team of senior officers from the three authorities, answerable to a steering group which includes an elected member and chief officer from each council. A partnership development manager has been appointed to co-ordinate and oversee service development.

Workload

There has been a small increase (3%) in demand for core services across the partnership as a whole though there are variations between the constituent authorities. Both Angus and Perth and Kinross have experienced an 8% rise in probation orders and the latter has seen community service figures rise by 13%. The grouping advises us that they are experiencing some pressures as these increases in workload coincide with a period when recruitment and retention of staff is especially problematic.

Effective practice

The partnership uses a structured assessment to assess the risk/needs presented by offenders and determine level of intervention. The risk assessment tools that are in use are similar across the grouping, but are not identical. However, all members of the grouping indicate that they intend to adopt a nationally agreed framework for risk assessment when this becomes available. Structured offence focused group work is available across the partnership and to all residents of East Port House. Programmes which deal with substance users and those which deal with young people's offending behaviour are also available in each of the authorities. The partnership has successfully submitted a joint bid with Northern Partnership to the Scottish Executive for funding to develop a women's programme for accreditation. There is a commitment to undertake a best value review of programme provision and to use this as the basis for future developments.

Services to women offenders are also being developed through identification of more Community Service work placements which meet their needs. There are presently women-only Community Service squads in Dundee and light duties resources available in Perth. In Angus, women subject to community service are offered individual placements, with mixed gender teams operating only following requests from women offenders to be placed in such teams. Discussion is under way to provide a core training programme to Community Service staff, including offence / harm risk assessment. The core training programme for CS staff will involve training in pro-social modelling skills.

Other developments include extension of the Drug Treatment and Testing Order (D.T.T.O) scheme to Tayside Courts and establishment of an arrest referral scheme across the partnership. While the D.T.T.O scheme clearly has healthy levels of uptake and confidence from sentencers, compared to other schemes there was a very high proportion of two and three year Orders. While each case must turn on its merits and will depend on the individual sentencing decision made in Court, the grouping should continue to liaise effectively with the judiciary to manage the scheme in terms of ensuring sufficient ongoing treatment capacity.

To promote the social inclusion of offenders, the partnership has also contracted an Employability scheme from Apex. In addition, the partnership is developing its service to the prisons in its area, including undertaking risk assessments on all prisoners in the Open Estate and on those approaching release on licence or order from HMP Perth. For next year, the partnership aims to introduce a new prison throughcare service.

Public protection

Services to sex offenders across the partnership continue to be provided by the Tay Project. The Project now offers an additional programme for those sex offenders in denial of their offending. It has also extended the range of training it offers, including training earlier this year for Police across Scotland on its risk assessment tool, TAYPREP 30. The partnership aims both to seek validation for this tool and accreditation for its Induction programme for sex offenders.

Quality assurance

The partnership has embarked on a review of its data systems to ensure that information on needs, processes and outcomes is available on a regular basis. The partnership aims to establish an integrated approach to assessment of quality and to monitoring and evaluation.

Human Resource

Structure of the workforce

Between 2000 and 2002, there were increases in the numbers of whole time equivalent fieldwork staff working with adults, children and offenders. There were also increases amongst the social worker posts (main grade and first line managers). In the same period, vacancies increased significantly across the client groups except for staff working with offenders. Overall, among fieldwork staff, there was an increase of 21 posts, while vacancies rose by 13. Social worker posts increased overall by nine and vacancies by four. These were most acute among children's services.

Latest figures provided by the Council and not yet confirmed suggest that, between October 2002 and the end June 2003, vacancy levels have increased significantly. They have risen from just under 6% to just over 9% of the social work posts. During this period the Council has created around 170 new jobs in social work. This has increased the vacancy rate within the department. The vacancy rates are made worse by the effect of short-term funding initiatives. These result in staff being seconded to projects, leaving temporary vacancies that are harder to fill.

Action to fill vacancies includes:

• recruitment events at universities and colleges, which targeted over 100 students;
• recruitment website, featuring information and testimonials;
• employing students on a seassional basis while they study;
• providing 'grow your own' opportunities;
• preparations to use a recruitment agency and launch a campaign to raise the image of social work across the city and within the Council; and
• from June 2004, a new care apprentice scheme with Dundee College which should identify school leavers with an aptitude for social care and offer them a course or Council placement as an apprentice.

A high percentage of the workforce is over 50 and nearly 20% of staff will leave in the coming 5 years.

Support for staff

The range of support includes:

• training in managing stress and risk;
• a restricted access database on high-risk clients to act as a warning mechanism on possible violence against staff;
• access to occupational health and return-to-work discussions;
• a handbook to help support staff in managing change;
• harassment support officers;
• an induction pack and employee development review scheme; and
• an awards ceremony each year to celebrate the attainment by staff of certificates of learning.

The absence rate is currently 7.2%. Sickness absence is more common in frontline staff, particularly those in residential childcare.

Working towards a more highly qualified workforce

Training provision includes:

• applications open each year to all staff for support and funding for a wide range of accredited courses and qualifications;
• encouraging home care staff working to build up their portfolios for SVQs; and
• practice placements for frontline managers.

The Council is investigating the need for a senior practitioner grade. It targets people leaving local colleges with HNCs to encourage them to apply for social work vacancies.

Preparing for registration

The Council was selected by the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) to be in the first phase for registration (social work qualified). All staff were invited to workshops with SSSC in April. Registration packs have also been issued to staff.

The Council worked with Stirling University on research into social workers' background careers and the qualifications needed for the job. Similar research for other social care staff is planned for future.

The Council has, for a number of years, been trying to look at qualifications for unit managers. It thinks it almost meets requirements.

Race Equality

Of the local population, 3.7% are from a minority ethnic group compared with 2% for Scotland as a whole.

A single Equality Strategy, including disability and gender, takes in Race Equality. All staff receive two days' training on Race Equality.

The Council takes part on a multi-agency panel on racial harassment. Incidents across the partner organisations are reported by way of one standard reporting form. Completed forms go to the monitoring agency and this gives a clear picture of the number of incidents. The panel is considering setting up a local multi-agency group to respond to reported incidents.

The council is working with minority ethnic groups. Three native language workers from minority ethnic groups (including Punjabi, Chinese) have been doing outreach work.

A multi-lingual (all main community languages) information booklet has been produced for social work services. They use this as the front-line information booklet. The department has also produced a video entitled 'Services for You', which is available in English, Urdu and Chinese.

The Council is developing processes to improve its ethnic monitoring information.

Use of Information Communication Technology (ICT)

Social Services Department

In line with the department's IT strategy, a high quality system has been developing over the past few years. All staff have a networked PC or NC (thin client network computer) on their desk. These are around 900 PCs or NCs in the department.

The three largest social work offices have used thin client technology for three years. The department will upgrade this over the next few months to the latest version of metaframe and at the same time will extend metaframe to all offices and establishments.

The IT system brings access to email and standard office software (MS-Office) to all IT users. The social work system developed in-house (K2) is also available to all relevant staff.

The in-house K2 system no longer reflects current and expected business needs and will be upgraded. This will achieve further integration of IT systems into the mainstream business of the department, and will better reflect current and future needs for multi-agency working. The new system will provide facilities for on-line event and case recording. The upgraded K2 is needed to support service delivery within Social Work and in partnership with Housing, Education, Health and other Dundee City Council services and outside agencies.

Systems are being developed to meet the Council's duties in the supporting people legislation.

By targeting Primary Care and Care Management and streamlining the processes from the point of view of clients and patients, services should be made more accessible. Making it easier to share information at patient and client level should result in better outcomes for the clients and patients.

The overall aim is to develop a comprehensive electronic social care record and to prepare the way for sharing information at citizen, client and patient level, where it is thought to benefit the individuals concerned.

Partnerships

Dundee City Council and NHS Tayside have recently agreed a protocol for sharing information. At the moment, the Council has specific protocols with the NHS which allow them to share information on children and for community care. It is planned to extend sharing to the education service.

The Council is mapping processes and training for Single Shared Assessment to help sort out problems over consent.

Background Profile

Dundee is the fourth largest city in Scotland and has undergone great change in recent years. After its shift from heavy industry in the post-war period, it lost a large number of jobs in finance and transport and communications between 1995 and 2001. The service sector accounts for around eight out of every 10 jobs. The Council is trying to promote physical and economic regeneration and to encourage more people to live in the area. Dundee is gradually setting itself up as a centre of biotechnology research and associated industrial development.

Unemployment is higher in some areas of the city which suffer from socio-economic disadvantage. Significant numbers of families have low incomes and receive benefits. The average earnings were 4% lower than those for Scotland as a whole.

Spending for each person on social work in 2001-2002 was 320, considerably above the Scottish figure 267.

Expected population change

Community Care

Expenditure on community care increased significantly in the period 1999-2002.

Children and Young People

G29

Expenditure on children's services increased steadily in the period 1999-2002.

Criminal Justice

Human Resources

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