Issue - meetings

FSD 18083

The Part 1 Internal Audit Progress Report was written by David Hogan, Head of Audit.

The report was written to inform Members of recent audit activity across the Council, and provided an update on issues that had arisen at the previous meeting.

Members were updated concerning the Audit of Contract Management for Adult Mental Health that had taken place previously. It was noted that the audit opinion was Limited and the five priority one recommendations were noted.

Five months subsequently, a follow up of Adult Mental Health was undertaken, and the progress on implementing five Priority 1 recommendations was reviewed.

In the previous audit it was pointed out that there had been no change in the contract for 14 years and no evidence of any change controls. It was noted that the current contract would either be terminated or formalised as a partnership agreement, or would continue as it was with the implementation of change controls to support any variations to the contract. The P1 recommendation remained open.

The Adult Mental Health Audit had identified that the performance measures in the agreement were obsolete and that no defined monitoring agreements were in place. It was also the case that a Mental Health Board was not in place and no reviews had been undertaken.

The follow up revealed that the agreement was going to be updated, with new KPI’s. Feedback was required from Oxleas. Members were pleased to note that the CCG Monitoring Board now met monthly and would be reviewing the Section 31 agreement regularly. It was also the case that a dedicated monitoring meeting led by LBB and chaired by the Director for Adult Social Care would be commencing in November 2018. The recommendation for Performance Measure and Monitoring would however, remain open.

The previous audit had also shown that roles and responsibilities were not clearly defined. These issues had now been resolved and so the previous P1 recommendation was closed.

The Adult Mental Health Audit had also shown deficiencies in the amount of time taken to complete service agreement reviews. Members were pleased to note that significant improvements had been made in dealing with the backlog of reviews and with completing new reviews on time. For this reason the P1 recommendation had been changed to partially implemented. As soon as Oxleas could evidence that the reviews for new starters were being reviewed within the target time of six months, then the status of the recommendation would be changed to fully implemented. 

The Head of Audit commented that much hard work had been done over the summer period, new appointments had been made and outstanding reviews had now been completed. Some improvements were dependent on responses from Oxleas.

The Director of Adult Social Care attended the meeting and apologised for the problems that had been identified by Internal Audit. He said that some of the difficulties that had been experienced had been caused by staffing issues and by conflicting priorities. He was grateful for the work undertaken  ...  view the full minutes text for item 21