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With such a complex and collaborative role envisaged for adult social care departments, it’s no surprise that different directors tend to emphasise different parts of their very flexible brief, writes Craig Kenny.

The new Directors of Adult Social Services (DASS) are meant to lead as ‘champions’ of vulnerable adults in their communities, giving them choice and independence, while still making decisions about what is affordable for them.

They will have a duty to protect vulnerable adults and be accountable to a host of regulators, while at the same time defending the right of disabled and older adults to take risks, according to best practice guidance on the DASS role.

"Directors need to recognise that people have a right to take risks"

Ray Jones

“Directors will need to be thinking about what contribution social care and social workers can make, but also to make sure that other services and the community in which they live also respond positively to disabled and older people,” says Ray Jones, director of adult and community services at Wiltshire Council.

“As a champion alongside disabled and older people, directors need to recognise that people have a right to take risks, and this is part of making them more independent and of having choice and control.

“This means directors have to have the professional and personal confidence to tolerate risks themselves, but also to be beside their staff and others in accepting and tolerating risk.”

Though the guidance emphasises the importance of developing the local care market, Jones – formerly the council’s overall social services director - sees the DASS as being on the consumer’s side.

“Market development is very much an activity that should be shaped by the wishes of disabled and older people,” he says. “Acting as a champion alongside disabled and older people is not telling them what they want, it’s finding out what they want and helping them to get it – albeit within what will still be rationed resources.”

Child protection remains key

Though children’s services have been split from adult, the importance of remaining focused on child protection remains a key consideration.

“For families where there’s a parent with mental health problems or a disability, the DASS needs to ensure a responsibility is accepted to assist the parent where necessary, so they can understand their parental roles and responsibilities well,” says Jones.

The guidance also places a lot of emphasis on responsibilities to child social services clients approaching adulthood, about giving them information and helping them plan their adult care.

Most directors agree this area was a weakness even when child and adult social services were joined. “Any way of organising services and allocating responsibilities is bound to create boundaries and potentially leave gaps,” says Jones. “One of the tasks of managers is to work across boundaries sensibly and to close the gaps.”

"The green paper is very visionary but short on mechanisms"

Gwen Ovshinsky, newly appointed DASS at Islington Council, previously held a joint social services/NHS commissioning post, and emphasises the importance of steering partner organisations towards common objectives.

“The green paper outcomes are not ones you would traditionally associate with social services for adults - they are more about economic wellbeing, social inclusion, improving the quality of lives and health,” she says.

“One problem of having such broad outcomes is how you link cause and effect. The green paper is very visionary but it’s short on mechanisms.”

The DASS role will be shaped by research on effective early interventions and a new set of performance measures, Ovshinsky believes. “If there was sharper focus on prevention, early intervention and enablement this might reduce the need for more costly and intensive services.

“And most social services performance indicators are process indicators – the challenge for government will be to come up with a set of outcome measures to help authorities refocus the way they do things.”

Funding

She is disappointed, however, that the green paper did not pledge the kind of serious investment in adult social care the NHS has recently enjoyed. “I don’t think it’s possible to bring about the whole systems change of the green paper without that additional funding.”

Another new task is to make regular strategic needs assessments to plan statutory and paid for services for the next 10 to 15 years, and to link this into the council’s housing needs assessment to ensure there will be sufficient stock for supported living.

This is the exciting part for Dwayne Johnson, strategic director for health and community at Halton Council, who has managerial experience both in social care and housing strategy.

“It’s an opportunity to have the interconnectedness among stakeholders and to join up our thinking,” he says, “Though I recognise the challenge that will create in boroughs where there’s more than one primary care trust.”

Stretching your thinking

The freedom councils are being given to bring other services under the adult social care umbrella has been taken to heart in Halton, which has also given Johnson responsibility for housing, leisure, community services and the arts.

“What the Department of Health is doing is stretching your thinking about other areas such as culture and leisure - it’s a less concentrated approach to the social care aspects and a much wider approach to the preventive agenda, and how can it slow the process of people going into high dependency care.”

Whether such a diverse portfolio will dilute or enhance the DASS role remains to be seen, but fears that it will have inferior status to the Director of Children’s Services (DCS) have not so far been justified.

A recent Community Care survey of 40 councils found that the DCS and DASS were mostly on the same payscales. And in his introduction to the guidance, health minister Stephen Ladyman insists the DASS has “equal status, importance and esteem” to the DCS, not diminished by the fact that the guidance is not statutory.

“It is important that the formal status of DASS is equivalent to formal status being given to DCS,” says Jones. “Otherwise over the years local authorities will give more attention to children and a declining attention to disabled adults and older people.”

* Best Practice Guidance on the Role of the Director of Adult Social Services

* Independence, Well-Being and Choice (Green Paper on Adult Social Care)

Available from www.dh.gov.uk