Warrington Council’s adult social care services have been rated as requiring improvement by inspectors, with concerns raised around its “complex” safeguarding processes.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) said the authority’s procedures “didn’t structurally work to keep people safe”, with its digital triage system on its online portal automatically closing some referrals without them being reviewed.
Inspectors said “rapid and widespread improvement” was needed in this area but there was also “positive work” being done by staff.
Warrington Council said it would act “swiftly and decisively” on the recommendations and that improvements were “already being made”.
The report said the authority spent just over a quarter of its budget on adult social care last year, and that there were about 3,500 people accessing long-term adult social care support and about 2,000 using short-term support during the period.
The CQC said safeguarding processes were complex and a cause for concern.
It said the online portal for reporting safeguarding concerns had responses being triaged digitally depending on the answers given and could “result in some safeguarding concerns being closed inappropriately”.
But in other areas, the report said, there had been a “clear culture shift” and the authority was working on a “prevention first” approach.
Although there was “mixed feedback” about peoples’ experiences, many spoke positively about staff and described them as “caring, compassionate and helpful”.
But some were frustrated by the length of time they had to wait for assessments, the report added.