Strengths and areas for improvement

Strengths

1. There is clear political support for the Adult Social Care agenda. The Leader and Portfolio Holders understand the importance of the council providing good quality support to local people.  We have a relatively new leadership team who are able to capitalise on Gloucestershire’s strengths to make the necessary changes for the future.
2. We have a diverse range of examples of good practice across all areas of service delivery, commissioning and assessment, thanks to enthusiastic and values driven teams, as illustrated in our self assessment.
3. Joint work with health, particularly in commissioning, means that system relationships are strong and shared work is developing well
4. We are supported by resources for our Adults Transformation Programme and Improvement Plan with programmes of work aimed at achieving our mission (see Appendix 4.1 and 4.2).
5. We have introduced a strong governance and continuous improvement approach to support us to deliver on our vision and mission – see Appendix 5 for how our governance is structured.
6. We know ourselves and our areas for improvement – we recently invited the LGA to undertake a preparation for assurance peer challenge which validated our self-assessment – see Appendix 3 for the LGA Peer challenge report.

Areas for improvement 

1. We need to develop our strategic overview of core priorities in key areas such as the prevention, reduction, and delay of needs for care and support, intermediate care, co production, and equity in experience and outcomes. Lack of focus on this has resulted in a plethora of initiatives and challenges in measuring their impact. We are starting to address this through a more strategic approach to priority setting. 
2. We need to develop our core governance and infrastructure in key areas such as data and intelligence, policy process and strategy management, and digital and ICT, which has resulted in weakened line of sight of key areas such as our delegated functions and contract management, and our ability to evidence the outcomes of our work.
3. We need to build on good relationships and develop our shared priorities across the One Gloucestershire system to ensure we are well placed to deliver improvements related to our Care Act responsibilities and aligned on our strategic intent.