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CHAPTER 2
Context
Introduction
The inspection of Aberdeen City Council's social work services took place between August 2007 and December 2007. Our inspection team consisted of SWIA inspectors, associate inspectors, sessional inspectors and a carer inspector. For the first time, as a pilot exercise, SWIA also involved young people, who had previously been looked after away from home, as lay inspectors. They led focus groups with young people who had received throughcare and aftercare services and with young people who had been accommodated. They also led the interview with the children's rights officer.
During the inspection we read a wide selection of material about the council and the social work services it provided or commissioned. Social work services in Aberdeen come under the heading of health and care services and that is how we will refer to them throughout this report. We analysed questionnaires received from staff, adults who use services, carers and stakeholders. Together with some staff from Aberdeen City Council's health and care services we spent four days examining case files. The team then spent a further two weeks in Aberdeen looking at services as part of a fieldwork exercise.
During fieldwork, we spoke to people who used services, their carers and people who were responsible for delivering or arranging services. We met with representatives from a range of organisations and groups as well as elected members and other stakeholders. We also visited places providing health and care services and people's homes when they received services there. As a result, we collected an extensive range of evidence that informed the content, evaluations and recommendations contained in this report.
This report is not a detailed description of all the health and care services in Aberdeen City. It gives an overview and concentrates on the work being undertaken with people who need assistance and the areas where improvements are needed. It does not duplicate the inspection of services which are regulated by the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care (Care Commission) and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education ( HMIe). In order to achieve this, the Care Commission and HMIe provided us with information about their inspection reports from Aberdeen. The Care Commission were also inspecting elements of the fostering and adoption services whilst we were there, and some sessions of the fieldwork were undertaken jointly.
Area profile
Aberdeen City had a population of 202,090 located within 186 square kilometres, which made it Scotland's third largest city. The population density was 1,088 people per square kilometre making Aberdeen one of the most densely populated authorities in Scotland.
The city's population had decreased by 4.3% since 2000, while overall, Scotland's population had increased by 0.04%. People of pensionable age made up 18.0% of the population (Scotland figure was 19.2%), while 15.8% are under the age of 16 (Scotland's figure was 18.0%). There were 61,136 people in Aberdeen aged 0-24. This was fewer than 30% of the total population. The city's 75+ population was due to increase by 12.8% by 2014 and 33.9% by 2024. The equivalent Scotland figures were an increase of 18.8% and 53.3% respectively. A population decline of 8.4% by 2014 and 18.2% by 2024 was predicted (both changes related to the 2004 population). 2
People of working age accounted for 66% of all people in Aberdeen. This was higher than for Scotland as a whole. 83% of working age people were economically active which was higher than the Scotland average of 80%. The employment rate (80%) was higher than the Scotland average (76%), and the number of jobs had increased by 5% between 1997 and 2005 (across Scotland these increased by 15%) with an increase in service sector jobs and a decrease in manufacturing jobs. The unemployment rate in Aberdeen (1.2%) was lower than Scotland as a whole. 3
The city had a geographical concentration of social and economic deprivation, with an associated high proportion of offenders, significant substance misuse and significant health inequalities. The council's briefing paper 2006-07 relating to the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation ( SIMD) 2006 stated that the number of deprivation zones in Aberdeen had risen from 18 in 2004 to 27 in 2006. These belonged to the most deprived 15% of all Scottish Data Zones. Between 2004 and 2006 the population living in deprived areas in Aberdeen rose from 13,161 to 18,027 - an increase of 37%.
Criminal justice social work services
SWIA originally inspected Aberdeen's criminal justice social work services as part of a separate national programme of inspections in 2006. Our findings gave us cause for concern and we carried out a follow-up inspection of criminal justice social work services as part of the city's performance inspection. Chapter 9 outlines the findings of this inspection.
Organisation of health and care services
From the preliminary information submitted by the council, we learned that, since the creation of Aberdeen City Council in 1996, there had been three phases of change. At the time of our inspection, the council was in the final phase of the change programme with a corporate structure of three neighbourhoods being put in place (neighbourhood services north, neighbourhood services south and neighbourhood services central) each with a corporate director responsible for a multi-disciplinary team.
In addition there were three corporate directorates operating centrally; strategic leadership, continuous improvement and resources management. Each had a corporate director.
Appendix 4 contains a diagram of the council's structure.
Aberdeen City Council's health and care service employed 2054 staff in the area teams and in related posts within strategic leadership and resources management.
The key areas of service delivery were:
- children and young people's services
- criminal justice
- adult services.
Services to children within Aberdeen were delivered from the area service management teams - one health and care team, one culture and learning team and one early years team within each of the three areas. The majority of services were delivered on an area basis, and some were delivered from an area but on a city-wide basis where required.
Children's health and care service delivery in the area service management teams included:
- ten area children and family teams (four north, three central, three south)
- two hospital teams (city-wide)
- children with disability team (city-wide)
- youth justice team (city-wide)
- three adoption and fostering teams (city-wide, but aligned to areas)
- family centres
- outreach services
- joint child protection unit (city-wide)
- four children's homes (city-wide)
- throughcare and aftercare
- early years service.
Strategic support for frontline services to children and adults was provided from strategic leadership services. This included:
- Office of the chief social work officer ( CSWO): strategic commissioning, quality assurance, professional supervision of the provision of training for health and care staff, independent chairing and reviewing service for looked after children and child protection case conferences, children's rights service, complaints management and investigation, freedom of information and subject access requests, policy and procedures relating to professional processes, protection of children and vulnerable adults, adoption and fostering and criminal justice.
- Planning and policy for services to children and young people: validation of quality assurance, oversight of the equitable allocation and proper use of resources, strategic planning and policy development.
- Planning and policy for services to adults: validation of quality assurance, oversight of the equitable allocation and proper use of resources, strategic planning and policy development.
Support services for social work were also provided from:
- Resources management: contract monitoring, training and development and asset management, finance, legal and democratic services, human resources and committee services.
- Continuous improvement: customer relationship management, change management, corporate communications, and performance management.
Third-tier staff within strategic leadership services were referred to as strategists and this term is used throughout the report.
Political structure
Aberdeen City Council was led by 43 elected members and its political make up at the time of our inspection was as follows:
- Liberal Democrat 15
- SNP 13
- Scottish Labour 10
- Scottish Conservative 4
- Independent 1
Inspection methodology and process
The structure of this report is based on the SWIA performance inspection model, which asks six key questions.
1. What key outcomes have we achieved?
2. What impact have we had on people who use services and other stakeholders?
3. How good is our delivery of key processes?
4. How good is our management?
5. How good is our leadership?
6. What is our capacity for improvement?
The following chapters address each of these questions in turn.
SWIA had undertaken a multi-agency inspection of substance misuse services across the Grampian region and a report was published in August 2007. Some elements of substance misuse services were considered as part of this performance inspection. However, we did not seek to duplicate work covered by this previous inspection.
A more detailed description of the inspection methodology and the way in which we carried out our inspection are included in Appendices 2 and 3.
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