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Agenda item

Call In the Director of Social Services and Head of Service re the Internal Audit of Adoption Allowances resulting in a Second Unsatisfactory Opinion

Minutes:

The Chief Internal Officer introduced the report to committee members.

 

Following two consecutive Unsatisfactory Internal Audit opinions, the Strategic Director for Social Services and the Head of Service responsible for Adoption Allowances were invited to the Governance and Audit Committee to provide assurances that appropriate improvements within service provisions and the control environment were in place. Initially improvements had been implemented, however subsequently, Internal Audit were made aware that no service was being provided for a period of time.

 

The Strategic Director for Social Services advised the committee that they were aware of the challenges faced by social services and therefore called upon the Audit Team to undertake this audit.

 

The Strategic Director also wanted to assure the Committee that no child or adoptive family suffered during this period and that adoption allowances had been provided for a small number of children.

 

There was a series of action plans put in place to address the issues and build resilience for the future to ensure that a greater number of staff were able to undertake the tasks.

 

Finally, the Strategic Director reassured the committee that all applications for this year had been progressed within the timeframe.

 

The Head of Children Services advised that there was a newly appointed service manager with experience in the area, who was drawing together an all-encompassing policy, should another audit take place and this would determine that they would be satisfied with the process in place.

 

Comments of Committee:

 

Chair considered that members should not focus on the past  but how to move this agenda forward and receive reassurance from the service area.

 

Dr Barry referred delayed response due to the absence of a finance officer and principal officer, could a response be provided by another officer.  The Strategic Director confirmed that the delay was because of the absence of those specific officers, both of whom were off at the time due to ill health for a substantial time.  Going forward there needed to be a spread of staff who would have the confidence to carry out the assessments effectively as well as shared resilience with other finance officers within social services should they face similar issues in the future.

 

Dr Barry asked was it complicated completing the financial assessments and was there a set of desk instructions in place to help officers step by step.  The Strategic Director advised that there were many complex layers to completing the financial assessments that would be too complex for step by step instructions.

 

Councillor Horton asked the audit team if they had confidence in the Social Services team should there be a re-audit of the service area.  The Chief Internal Auditor said yes and that should there be a re-check a follow through would see what had been put in place to demonstrate good practice, hopefully with a more improved opinion.

 

D Reed asked was there a danger that those people receiving an allowance were overpaid. The Strategic Director advised that some people would have been over however these numbers were small but this was a better option than anyone suffering detriment.

 

The Strategic Director also advised D Reed in a follow up question, that the overpayment would not be taken back from those that had received it, as the fault laid with the service area and not those that received the overpayment.

 

Councillor Mogford asked what the timescale for next audit of Social Services would be.  The Chief Internal Auditor advised that they already had commenced with a further audit which would by completed by Quarter three.  This was unusual because of the double unsatisfactory audits, but were in constant communication with relevant staff who were taking this issues seriously.  The follow up audit would be reported back to the committee.

 

Cllr Cocks asked if the Strategic Director could give the committee a sense of proportion in relation to officers, individuals applying for allowances and the sums of money. The Strategic Director advised that allowances varied per the needs of the child and ranged widely. An adoption allowance could be paid for only one year for one child rather than a longer period, childcare might be a factor, or even lessons to meet a child’s needs.  The allowances were linked to fostering rates through the Welsh Government.

 

Councillor Cocks asked where there any HR issues in relation to those members of staff who were on long term sick and why had this not been discussed. The Strategic Director advised that the HR comments were in relation to the report process not the individuals, therefore HR would not be commenting on the report.  In terms of the wider issue regarding why it was not  picked up regarding the three members of staff was because it was during covid and covid related illness, which had its own particular challenges, hence it went under the radar to some extent.  There were a number of things that social services were still looking into regarding this issue.

 

Councillor Cocks raised the issue out of concern of the staff welfare rather than performance. The Strategic Director thanked Councillor for raising this and felt that overall, staff were struggling during that period of time in terms of capacity and support.

 

Councillor Cocks observed that it was not brought to the Cabinet Member’s attention because it was an operational level and not a strategic level and wondered how bad it got before the Cabinet Member was involved.  The Strategic Director advised that this was one of the things that would be put right in future.

 

Councillor Horton asked was there an actual number of the over payments what was received. The Strategic Director could not provide exact number although it was a very small amount of money and would find out exactly the correct information for Councillor Horton.

 

The Chair was assured that the Strategic Director had taken this matter very seriously.  There was a new service manager in place and new staff to build resilience within the team.  There was no one waiting for any money, as all applications had been processed. There were transferable skills within the team to also help with resilience. Also, lessons had been learned and any outstanding items would be addressed in the action plan. 

 

The Chair finally mentioned that if the audit was to be completed by the end of December 2022 a brief update to committee to find out how the audit was going would be welcomed.

 

The Chief Internal Auditor would work towards providing an interim report to the committee by January 2023.

 

The chair thanked the Strategic Director and Head of Childrens Services for attending the meeting.

 

Resolved:

That

·       Members of the Governance and Audit Committee accepted the explanations and assurances of the Strategic Director and the Head of Service, which will be confirmed via the follow up internal audit

·       An Interim update report would also be available in January 2023.

 

Supporting documents: