5 July - Bexley Council admits to being the worst borough for Extra Care Housing and abortions
The
Adult Social Care & Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting is, not to
put to fine a point on it, almost always a bore, and the one held on 1st July was no exception.
Here are the few things of minor interest I managed to pick out of the webcast…
• There is going to be a Care Quality Commission assessment of Bexley Council’s
performance some time in the next three or four months. They only need a 62%
score to be rated Good. The Council does not believe it has any critical weak points.
• Despite promises made in Council seven years ago no new “extra care housing” has been
provided since then “but it remains a huge priority”. Bexley is an outlier,
“pretty much every other borough provides care housing. Bexley does not.” The
Council officer said she knows of no other borough that has made no provision
for extra care housing. No Councillor expressed any surprise or regret but
Councillor Peter Reader (Conservative, West Heath) said the seven year old
promise was not the first; it was also a recommendation of a sub-Group ten or eleven years ago.
• Councillor Nicola Taylor (Labour, Erith) sought assurance that the staff being
CQC assessed for the first time in 15 years would be protected from any stress that might be brought on by the
inspection. “There is a whole programme of support in place.”
• Several Bexley Council wards do not have any dentistry facilities at all.
• Bexley has a very bad record for “untreated chlamydia” and a “far higher rate of
pregnancy terminations than other London boroughs or even England”.