Shake-up of social care reporting

Directors of adult social services departments will publish their own annual reports on the quality of their services and targets for improvement, under proposals outlined in a Department of Health consultation.

The DH said the reports would be published alongside social care data and outcomes measures. Members of local involvement networks or health watch panels may be required to sign off the reports.

The proposals were unveiled at the same time as councils were set a target of having a million service users with personal budgets. They embrace the Local Government Group’s call for sector-led performance management, and follow on from the scrapping of the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) annual assessment.

Under the proposals, councils would review each other’s accounts and drive improvement, leaving the CQC to focus on risk-based inspection.