The core components of the DASS role.
Your role is a vital one, ensuring adults receive the care and support they need. This section summarises the statutory duties of the DASS and the key aspects of their remit.
One of your primary statutory duties is accountability for assessing local needs and ensuring the availability and delivery of a full range of adult social services. This involves seeking insights and views from local people, working closely with partners such as the NHS and voluntary organisations, and collating evidence alongside qualitative feedback to identify the needs of the local population and ensure services are tailored to meet those needs, to the appropriate standards.
You play a leading role in the implementation of standards, including ensuring all services are delivered in line with relevant legislation and regulations, as well as promoting best practice and continuous improvement.
You have a key leadership role in delivering the local authority’s part in improving preventative services and delivering earlier intervention, managing the necessary cultural change to give people greater choice and control over services, tackling inequalities and improving access to services, as well as supporting people with the highest levels of need.
The aim is to develop sustainable services that promote independence and minimise the need for intensive home care and residential services, to improve social inclusion and wellbeing, and to consider the wider needs of families and carers in the planning and delivery of the full range of services provided by the local authority.
The focus on wellbeing involves championing the needs of adults that goes beyond the organisational boundaries of adult social care. Promoting social inclusion and wellbeing means working with local partners to ensure services are delivered in a co-ordinated way, promote independence and enable individuals to live fulfilling lives.
When it comes to professional leadership, including workforce planning, you are responsible for ensuring there are sufficient numbers of skilled and trained staff to provide high-quality care and support services. This includes working with local training providers to develop training programmes and support for the continuing professional development of staff. Maintaining an appropriately skilled workforce is one of the biggest challenges and there are further insights in this guide.
Managing cultural change is another key aspect of your role. This involves promoting a culture of person-centred care, where the individual’s needs and preferences are at the heart of all decision making. This includes ensuring services are delivered in a way that promotes equality and diversity.
Putting in place an integrated, whole-system approach to supporting communities involves working with local partners to ensure all services are delivered in a co-ordinated and seamless way. This includes focusing on improving outcomes for individuals and promoting joined-up working between health and social care services. Through these responsibilities, you are expected to promote local access and ownership and pro-actively drive partnership working.
Although your statutory responsibilities are broad, additional responsibilities were placed on councils through the Care Act 2014 that were not included in the original guidance. These are now incorporated as integral functions of adult social care departments delivered through councils and as such, you, as a DASS, recognise the relevance of seeing these as part of your responsibilities, such as care market shaping and ensuring continuity of care if a provider fails.
Your role as DASS is a complex and challenging one, but it is vital in ensuring adults receive the care and support they need, when they need it.