Agenda item

Report of the Director of Adult Services

The Cabinet Member considered a report of the Director of Adult Services concerning the Mental Health Market Development Plan, a copy of which was set out at an appendix to the report. The report sought approval for publication of the Plan.

The report indicated that  demand for mental health residential care and supported accommodation, and complexity of those coming through the system, had increased significantly in recent years due to local and national factors, and was projected to grow further as population numbers increased and the long-term effects of the Covid-19 pandemic continued to be felt. In recent years there had been a move towards more person-centred, enablement-based care and support in Adult Social Care. Over the next five years the Council planned to:

·  Raise the quality of the existing mental health nursing, residential and supported accommodation to ensure evidence-based recovery-focused models were delivered in high-quality settings. Existing providers would be offered extensive support to meet required standards but ultimately decommissioned if standards were not met.

·  Stimulate the market to develop additional capacity to meet the needs of existing service users, Coventry people placed out of city, and increased numbers of service users projected for the next five years. This would include a larger proportion of supported accommodation to promote reablement, recovery and a move back to independence, including specialist supported living for those with more complex needs or risks.

·  Developing and expanding the existing community-based support model to support more people in their own homes and to enable people to move on to independent living with appropriate step-down community support more quickly and sustainably. This aspect was not included in this plan as the intention was to investigate Council internal options prior to considering independent sector options.

The report detailed that Councils had a duty to shape social care provider markets to ensure that a range of good quality provision was in place to meet the social care needs of individuals including adults with mental health conditions. This was achieved through good commissioning practice which ensured that providers were aware of the type and volume of support that was likely to be required both now and in the foreseeable future. 

Reference was made to Market Position Statements (MPS) which were a tool for providing this communication and the production of a Market Position Statement (MPS) for Adult Social Care was a requirement as part of the Care Act (2014). The Cabinet Member for Adult Services approved the Market Position Statement in October 2018. The report detailed what was included in this Market Position Statement.

Following the publication of Coventry’s MPS the intention had been to produce a series of Market Development Plans (MDP) to provide the market with additional information about population needs, current developments and gaps in provision. The current plan was in relation to adults with mental health conditions.  The Mental Health MDP was intended to achieve several objectives including:

·  Reiteration and building upon information about need and demand from the MPS

·  Reminding providers of the approach to adult social care and support in Coventry and its main objectives

·  Setting standards for evidence-based, high quality new provision

·  Explaining development schemes already in the pipeline

·  Describing the likely residual demand that would require provision in the future.

The Cabinet Member was informed that current and potential new providers had been made aware of the content of the MDP during formal and informal conversations about developing the market over the last 18 months. Feedback from the provider sector was positive as they had welcomed a document that built on the MPS and gave more detail on demand to inform their investment decisions and provided confirmation that Coventry remained a place to deliver good quality sustainable developments. This had indicated a strong appetite to develop the types of specialist and more general provision covered in the document. 

RESOLVED that approval be given to the publication of the Market Development Plan for adults with mental health conditions.