From its first CPA in 2002, Somerset County Council demonstrated a clear track record of progress in its scores. Its overall CPA category improved from fair in 2002 to 4-star in 2007 – a steady improvement with the score increasing every two years. This trend of improvement was reflected in most of the individual CPA service assessments, particularly in social care for adults, which rose from 2 to 4 in the same period.
At the time the CPA framework was introduced, the council enhanced its senior managerial capacity by appointing a new chief executive and a number of new corporate directors. Although these staff changes proved to be the catalyst for the improvement in the council over the next few years, the CPA framework was crucial in supporting this.
The council's priority was to improve its strategic planning and processes by redefining its vision and ambitions and putting in place performance management frameworks to assess whether it was reaching its goals. Somerset County Council recognised that these were the key elements of the CPA corporate assessment framework. CPA also now offered the council the opportunity to translate its ambitions into a tangible target: lifting its performance to excellent.
This renewal of the council's corporate ambitions led naturally to a focus on how well the individual services were able to support these ambitions. This was a real challenge for adult social care services because in the early part of CPA it did not really know how well its operational services were contributing to corporate goals.
Its performance management framework was not robust or embedded enough to provide the assurances the council needed. The newly appointed management team responsible for adult social care introduced a balanced scorecard approach, systematically improving the use of performance information and identifying the key specific areas that needed improvement. This focused on fundamental service elements such as assessment developing and the delivery of care packages and issuing statements of need to clients. The annual service assessments within the CPA framework provided a constant motivation for the service to better understand its own performance, and helped maintain the focus on its key priorities.
Another key factor behind the improved CPA service score for adult social care was the political leadership provided to the service. There was clear leadership and consistent cross-party support for its ambitions and plans, which gave the service the stability and time it needed to assess and address its challenges over the five years in question.
The adult social services department's desire to maintain its existing CPA scores through the annual assessment framework improved the service further. The recognition that adult social care has to get better all the time just to maintain its score of 4 has prevented the service from resting on its laurels and led to the creation of a good learning culture. The service is challenged through ongoing review and audit and the council learned from its previous experiences and used the published CPA scores and its own networks to seek out good practice elsewhere. In fact, operational teams self-selected their own areas to research and review as part of this process.
The community director responsible for adult social care found that while the individual service scores contributed positively to the overall CPA category, the fact that the council was improving as whole in turn also gave a strong impetus to individual services in their efforts to improve. The council recognised the importance of a positive CPA label for operational staff as it let them know how well they were doing, as well as having the benefits of a lighter-touch inspection regime as a result of being excellent. There was pride across the service that this was one of the few councils in the country to retain its CPA scores – a fact that generated a lot of interest from other councils, particularly in Somerset's approach to performance management.
CPA was a very valuable tool for Somerset County Council on its journey of improvement. It served not only as a positive stimulus for change, but also as a litmus test of how well the council was actually delivering. However, the council now recognises that the CAA framework needs to go further than the CPA approach, through greater engagement with the local community and the use of more sophisticated self-assessment tools so the outcomes that are being delivered can be more fully understood.