Sheffield Local Involvement Network

    Brian Silverwood addresses LINk Discussion Forum

More than 20 people attended the LINk Discussion Forum on Tuesday 25 January. Our first speaker was Brian Silverwood, Sheffield Inspector for the Care Quality Commission (CQC) who spoke about the new regulatory system for health and social care. This system is based around 28 outcomes of which 16 focus on service user outcomes. It replaces a system that was mainly desk-based review of policies so that the CQC now undertakes both planned reviews of services as well as responsive reviews that are triggered by specific concerns.

An audience member asked whether the CQC does unannounced visits at night or weekends. Brian explained that while he would favour being able to do this, resources mean that they can only work office hours. He talked through how the whole review process worked and how useful it had been getting information from LINk about local providers. He was also interested in our Care Homes work and has agreed to come back in the future and to bring a social care colleague with him.

Speaking after the event Brian said, "Thank you very much for making me feel welcome and giving me the opportunity to explain how our regulatory planned and responsive reviews work in practice. It was very pleasing to see that the audience was interested in what I had to say and my talk certainly led to very valuable questions. I look forward to continuing as your local CQC link person and working with you in the future. Please keep up your very valuable work."

Mike Smith introduces Mary Gardner

 Our second speaker was Mary Gardner, from Sheffield City Council's Self-Directed Support (SDS) Team. She is a user of SDS services as well as a member of the team and spoke very well about this complex area. She also showed us an excellent leaflet about Social Care for Adults  that helps to explain this in simple terms. An animated debate followed with lots of questions about what it means in reality for different groups.

This Discussion Forum was a great success and the next one will take place on March 22 although the speakers are still to be confirmed. See our website calendar on the home page and the LINk Bulletin for more information as we have it.