Health and Community Care Committee, 12 Dec 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, December 12, 2000

Official Report 234KB pdf

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Joint Future Group Report

Item 7 is the joint future group report, which has now been published. It makes a number of recommendations on joint working, rebalancing the care of older people, charging for home care and the collection and sharing of good practice.

With the report, the Executive is building on the statement that was made on 5 October. There is quite a lot of common ground between the joint future group report and our committee report on community care. The deadline for a committee response is tight. The Executive has said that the tight time scale has been imposed because it is due to respond to the committee's community care report by 23 January. It would quite like to see what we will say about the joint future group report, as that will form an important element of its response to our report. The committee and the Executive are going both ways at the same time on this occasion.

If members agree that we should accept the Executive's time scale as a possibility and that we should respond to the joint future group report by 12 January, the best way forward might be for us to appoint a reporter to report on behalf of the committee. We can consider the reporter's report on a suggested response to the Executive at our meeting on 10 January.

When I read through the joint future group report, I found that many of its recommendations are in our report on community care. I also found that some of its recommendations, such as reducing inconsistency in charging, the best practice centre, the single assessment and training, to name but a few, have been implemented from 5 October. I found that much of our report had been addressed.

Perhaps we could ask Alison Petch or Gordon Marnoch, who are steeped in the issues, to cross-reference points that they suggested and that were not included in our report, although we need the Executive's response to our report before we can commit ourselves to making new suggestions. I found little in the joint future group report that was new, that the minister did not address or that was not addressed in our report.

They have formally come to the end of their contract with us, so we would have to ask for an extension, but I would not expect that to be a difficulty; the only difficulty might be the timing in getting it done. We could always make an approach to ask whether they are happy to do that. Are there any other points?

Chapter 3 refers to the historical position of closures and increases—essentially the switch from long-stay geriatric beds to nursing home beds between 1994 and 1999. There is nothing in here about the forward plans. We know what they are in respect of learning disability, because they are in "The Same as You?"—the probable closure of 2,500 beds.

We have political debates about the closure of beds in the health service. It is important that we distinguish between acute beds, which are important, and other beds. We should at least ask the Minister for Health and Community Care to clarify the plans for the closure of long-stay geriatric and psychogeriatric beds, and other long-stay beds. There are 17,700 of them, as we know. How many of them is it proposed to close, and over what time period? The response may be, "These plans are not held centrally," but we can at least try.

Any other comments, cynical or otherwise?

I do not think that we have a huge job to do. Like Mary Scanlon, reading through this report I get the impression that it is some way behind where the debate is just now.

Yes, it is.

One of our comments will be that some of it is redundant, because the debate has moved on. The report of this committee goes a lot further in a lot of areas. A cross-referencing exercise would be useful, although I am not sure that we need to get the advisers to do it; we could appoint somebody from the committee.

Are you proposing yourself Nicola?

No, I am not. Someone could do that job and come back with a report.

It would be a lengthy report.

It would be lengthy, but quite insubstantial.

It would be repetitive.

But it would not be a big exercise.

Are there any other comments?

Are we appointing a reporter? If so, I nominate Margaret Smith, which is the last thing I can do before I go.

I am happy to act as a reporter, and as a liaison between Alison Petch and Gordon Marnoch. Even if I do the cross-referencing work myself, I will ask them to cast an eye over it to check that it is okay. I am happy to do that work over the Christmas period, and we can address this matter again on 10 January. If colleagues have any comments, along the lines of those made by Richard Simpson or anything else, they should give them to me during the coming week, and I can come back with something for the 10 January meeting. Is that agreed?

That is what I was going to suggest. It is exceedingly noble of you, convener, because the time scale is short.

You know me, Dorothy-Grace.

I was going to suggest that whoever was appointed reporter, we should put our comments on paper so that we have the controversies and nuggets that come out of the exercise.

I do not know whether I am noble or plain sad.