There has been clear evidence throughout this project that day- to-day relationships need to be strengthened. We have suggested that there are four areas that need to be worked on:

• ECC becoming less remote and officious, and quicker to respond to providers' needs;
• ECC being more consistent and open in its approach around costs,  placements and safeguarding;
• Accessibility of social workers; and
• For all providers to actively engage in operational issues and not withhold information related to quality, financial uncertainty and safeguarding

Some of these issues will be addressed by many of the actions suggested above (e.g. rebuilding trust, ECC paying more regard to its transactional responsibilities, providing a clearer direction to the market and setting out clearer performance expectations). However, we feel there is an equal need for local service teams and providers to discuss more openly some of the issues set out above in paragraph 20.1, and more widely in this report, in order to devise local actions that can improve relationships.  Some of these might be quick fixes but others may require more time and effort.   As part of the Provider Engagement and Adult Social Care project a recommendation was made that all emails for providers should be responded to within 24 hours, advising who will respond and approximately when. We think that this remains a reasonable service standard for ECC to adopt and would go some way of strengthening local relationships between care managers and service teams.