Review of the Implementation of the Northern Ireland Single ...

2.0 Meetings with Trust Management (in relation to Standards for Adult
Social Care Support Services)
Standards for Adult Social Care Support Services provide a foundation for
informing best practice and assisting with the planning, delivery, audit, review
and inspection of social care support services for carers across the region.
The review team used four of these standards to benchmark current practice
and service development. This was assessed and validated from an
examination of each trust self-assessment questionnaires which formed the
basis for interviews with trust management.
2.1 Standard 1: Planning, Commissioning, Delivery and Review of Social
Care Services
Carers and/or carers‟ representative organisations are actively involved
in the planning, commissioning and review of social services
All trusts reported that health and social care services for older people are
delivered through Primary Care Directorates and Older People‟s Services.
Each trust indicated that there are appropriate arrangements in place for
social work and social care governance, through their operational
management lines to their Executive Director of Social Work and onward to
their trust board. These arrangements assist in ensuring appropriate
monitoring, assurance and reporting of carer‟s issues to the trust Board in
order to underpin the legal discharge of statutory functions by each trust.
The Departmental Circular HSS (ECCU) 3/2008 11 required all trusts to identify
a trust board member with lead responsibility for carers‟ issues across their
organisations. This circular describes in some detail the role and remit of the
board member. The review team was informed by each trust that they had an
identified board member with a specific responsibility for carers. At the time of
this review, the Belfast Trust was in the process of appointing a new carer
champion to its board, as the previous responsible person had moved to
another trust. The Northern, Southern and Western trusts each had
appointed a director with lead responsibility for carers‟ issues. The Southern
Trust Board had appointed two members with responsibility for carers‟ issues;
a non-executive board member and a lead operational director.
All trusts had also identified a senior manager to represent the interests of
carers, who either chaired or had membership of the trust‟s carers‟ strategy
implementation group and held responsibility for keeping trust board members
informed of carers‟ issues.
11 Departmental Circular HSS (ECCU) 3/2008 which can be accessed at:
http://www.dhsspsni.gov.uk/carers
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