This area of the Council includes services such as:
- Adult Social Care
- Children’s Social Care
- Support for vulnerable families
- Education
- Public Health.
Key priorities in this area, particularly as we move forward from COVID-19, are as follows.
| Priority | Areas of focus as we recover from COVID-19 |
| Support children and young people to have the best start in life | - Supporting the emotional health and wellbeing of young people
- Finding new ways to support families at an earlier stage and reduce the need for more costly crisis services
- Supporting the education needs of all children and young people as they return to school
- Embedding new digital approaches to support children and families.
|
| Enable more adults to live longer, healthier and happier lives | - Implementing a robust test and trace approach to manage infections and outbreaks
- Improving public health, particularly in relation to obesity
- Transforming adult social care to provide care, which is more joined up with the NHS, closely connected with communities and embraces technology
- Improving services that support good mental health
|
Overall the budget for this area is £192.5 million a year. The Council has previously consulted on savings for 2021-4 of £5.5 million (2.9 per cent of the budget in this area).
This will largely be achieved by putting in place services that prevent the need for more expensive and intensive support later. We also have a priority to put people at the centre of care rather than be overly focused on delivering services from specific buildings.
To put this into perspective, we currently support over 15,000 adults with social care needs and almost 2,000 children in need of specialist help and protection. The money needed for this support varies but, for example, to support children with complex needs by providing residential care, costs around £189,000 per child each year. The price of this care has risen by 16 per cent in the last 12 months. Similarly, the cost of packages of support for those with a learning disability can vary greatly, but on average, is around £44,000 per year for each individual.
To balance the budget and ensure there is enough money to tackle the priorities set out above, the proposals under consideration are as follows.
Support to adults
(1.1) Review of mental health services: The Council provides mental health support to residents to aid their social care needs. There is scope to transform the service to provide rapid help to people to avoid escalation to crisis; to achieve a better balance between building-based and outreach services and to consider greater links with local health services. Overall, by avoiding escalation to crisis, this could save £120,000.
(1.2) Transforming learning disability services: We plan to review the way we work with adults with learning disabilities and the range of services and support options available. This will include reviewing and improving our supported living offer, working closely with providers to enable more services to be delivered locally and reduce the need for people to be placed outside of the borough. We could also make greater use of assistive technology to enable people to maximise their independence and work with people to access community resources and facilities to reduce reliance on more traditional services. These measures should reduce service level costs by an additional £325,000.
(1.3) Ensuring funding is in place to support the transition of children into adult social care: We have identified that more can be done to plan for the transition of children who require social care support into adult services. We will do a full review to identify opportunities to improve transition and to better manage costs. Even after this review, it is expected that further funding of £1.775 million will be required to meet the increasing demand on adult services.
(1.4) More efficient ways of delivering care: Demand for care at home continues to grow and we are not always able to provide this support when it is needed. This can place greater pressure on families or mean we must provide alternative more expensive services whilst people wait for care at home. We need to make best use of the support available and ensure care is delivered in a person-centred and dignified way. There are a number of care packages that are currently delivered by two people at the same time and there is scope with appropriate equipment, training and support, for this care to be delivered by a single care worker, providing greater dignity for the person receiving care, and increasing domiciliary care capacity. Alongside a combination of other projects to better meet needs, this could save an additional £1.68 million on service delivery costs.
(1.5) Joining up support with the NHS: Building on the joint work between the Council and the NHS over recent years, which has accelerated during the pandemic, it is proposed to join up more care workers with health workers in the community. This will help avoid hospital and care home admissions, and support people to return home more swiftly from hospital through rapid access to integrated health and social care resources. Overall this could save £400,000 a year when the costs of the model are considered.
(1.6) Expanding the range of social care support available: There is scope to extend more choice to people in how their care and support needs can be met. For example, we are working to make direct payments more accessible and easier to manage. Direct payments involve the Council providing a payment to the individual needing care who can then employ a personal assistant to meet their needs rather than this being arranged through the local authority. We also want to increase the range of services available to meet people’s social, respite care and accommodation needs. As part of this, in partnership with Vivo, we plan to grow the Shared Lives service. Shared Lives is a person-centred service, matching people with a carer or carers who will share activities, or their family life and home, meeting the needs of older people, adults with learning disabilities and adults with autism who need support, or support and accommodation, to live full and more independent lives. Overall these proposals are intended to improve service delivery and better meet the needs of service users and could save £600,000 a year when fully implemented.
(1.7) Review of building-based care: We are committed to delivering more care and support services at, or as close to, people’s own homes and communities as possible. We now need to review our building-based services to enable this continued improvement in the range of flexible services on offer. There are some buildings that are underused, do not have modern facilities, and are not close to where care is required. A more detailed consultation on these proposals will take place but, overall, this could save £1.188 million a year if fully implemented.
(1.8) Meeting our core responsibilities: We are already consulting on a new Adult Social Care Charging Policy for non-residential care services to ensure we have a fair and consistent approach to charging for services. In addition, we need to ensure that we are only funding social care services that the Council has a statutory duty to fund. Overall, these proposals could save £1.722 million.
(1.9) Review of care provided by Vivo, our Council-owned care company: We are proposing to work with Vivo to ensure that care is provided at the most appropriate rate. In particular, we are proposing that we work with Vivo to reduce the level of spending above the agreed block contract by maximising capacity within the block contract and, where appropriate, purchase services from other providers. Overall, this could save £500,000 a year.
(1.10) A new model for carer services: We arrange support for carers who play a vital role in our communities. Following consultation with carers, we believe there is an opportunity to redesign the service and make improvements in line with the feedback we get from carers. Overall, this could save £90,000 a year without having a major impact on service delivery.
(1.11) Review of community support: We fund a range of organisations within the community to provide support to individuals to reduce isolation and increase social support. We believe there may be some elements of duplication in this support and the potential to provide this help through technology. We would like to recommission these services with input from the community. We believe this could save £268,000.
Support to children, young people and families
(1.12) Sharing the costs of support with schools: Following a review, we would like to have further conversations with schools about sharing the costs of services we provide at a cost to the Council. This could include a range of services such as school crossing patrols, educational psychologists and administration. This could save the Council £570,000 a year.
(1.13) Home to school transport investment: Further home to school transport will be required as the number of children and young people rises. We will look to make our support as efficient as possible but, at the moment, it is predicted that an additional £528,000 a year will be required.
(1.14) Better targeting of youth services within our communities: We believe that the needs of young people are changing and that there are more effective ways to provide targeted, preventative services to those in the greatest need, which do not require the same level of centre-based delivery that we currently provide. This means more support can be delivered within communities on an outreach basis rather than solely through buildings. We have also secured grant funding from outside the Council, which has enabled us to reduce our budgets for some of our youth workers without impacting on service delivery. Overall this proposal will save £108,000.
(1.15) Preventing the need for more costly support for children’s social care: We have successfully developed a team of intervention workers who focus on preventing children needing to be in our care. We plan to expand this team so we can have a bigger impact which also includes helping to prevent placements breaking down for those children who need to be in our care, therefore reducing the need for more costly placements elsewhere. This initiative alongside other existing preventative services could save £970,000 a year.
(1.16) Additional in-house residential provision for children: We believe by providing more local residential provision for children in care through the Council, rather than out of the borough, we could save around £122,000. This would also ensure more support is provided closer to home, which also helps to prevent placements breaking down.
(1.17) Contract efficiencies in the leaving care service: We have a responsibility to support young people as they leave care up to the age of 25. We believe there is the opportunity to have a more efficient way of buying support by reducing spot purchases and increasing the use of pre-agreed contracts with providers, which could save £250,000.
(1.18) Strengthening our integrated approach across all children’s services: A review will take place to look at the links between early help, education and children’s social care to identify any synergies and opportunities to reduce demand for services and therefore costs. Overall this could save £200,000.
(1.19) Corporate parenting: We have a role to support children in our care as a corporate parent and ensure they have access to the opportunities that all our children should have. We will make a temporary budget of £50,000 permanent to help with this goal.
Public Health Services
(1.20) Public health funding review: We will explore whether all the services currently funded through the public health money we receive from Government reflect the latest priorities and are making the maximum difference. Overall this review could release around £550,000 which can be reinvested to support other activities in the Council that deliver public health goals, including our commitment to sustain leisure and wellbeing services delivered by Brio.
This area of the Council includes services such as:
- Adult Social Care
- Children’s Social Care
- Support for vulnerable families
- Education
- Public Health.
Key priorities in this area, particularly as we move forward from COVID-19, are as follows.
| Priority | Areas of focus as we recover from COVID-19 |
| Support children and young people to have the best start in life | - Supporting the emotional health and wellbeing of young people
- Finding new ways to support families at an earlier stage and reduce the need for more costly crisis services
- Supporting the education needs of all children and young people as they return to school
- Embedding new digital approaches to support children and families.
|
| Enable more adults to live longer, healthier and happier lives | - Implementing a robust test and trace approach to manage infections and outbreaks
- Improving public health, particularly in relation to obesity
- Transforming adult social care to provide care, which is more joined up with the NHS, closely connected with communities and embraces technology
- Improving services that support good mental health
|
Overall the budget for this area is £192.5 million a year. The Council has previously consulted on savings for 2021-4 of £5.5 million (2.9 per cent of the budget in this area).
This will largely be achieved by putting in place services that prevent the need for more expensive and intensive support later. We also have a priority to put people at the centre of care rather than be overly focused on delivering services from specific buildings.
To put this into perspective, we currently support over 15,000 adults with social care needs and almost 2,000 children in need of specialist help and protection. The money needed for this support varies but, for example, to support children with complex needs by providing residential care, costs around £189,000 per child each year. The price of this care has risen by 16 per cent in the last 12 months. Similarly, the cost of packages of support for those with a learning disability can vary greatly, but on average, is around £44,000 per year for each individual.
To balance the budget and ensure there is enough money to tackle the priorities set out above, the proposals under consideration are as follows.
Support to adults
(1.1) Review of mental health services: The Council provides mental health support to residents to aid their social care needs. There is scope to transform the service to provide rapid help to people to avoid escalation to crisis; to achieve a better balance between building-based and outreach services and to consider greater links with local health services. Overall, by avoiding escalation to crisis, this could save £120,000.
(1.2) Transforming learning disability services: We plan to review the way we work with adults with learning disabilities and the range of services and support options available. This will include reviewing and improving our supported living offer, working closely with providers to enable more services to be delivered locally and reduce the need for people to be placed outside of the borough. We could also make greater use of assistive technology to enable people to maximise their independence and work with people to access community resources and facilities to reduce reliance on more traditional services. These measures should reduce service level costs by an additional £325,000.
(1.3) Ensuring funding is in place to support the transition of children into adult social care: We have identified that more can be done to plan for the transition of children who require social care support into adult services. We will do a full review to identify opportunities to improve transition and to better manage costs. Even after this review, it is expected that further funding of £1.775 million will be required to meet the increasing demand on adult services.
(1.4) More efficient ways of delivering care: Demand for care at home continues to grow and we are not always able to provide this support when it is needed. This can place greater pressure on families or mean we must provide alternative more expensive services whilst people wait for care at home. We need to make best use of the support available and ensure care is delivered in a person-centred and dignified way. There are a number of care packages that are currently delivered by two people at the same time and there is scope with appropriate equipment, training and support, for this care to be delivered by a single care worker, providing greater dignity for the person receiving care, and increasing domiciliary care capacity. Alongside a combination of other projects to better meet needs, this could save an additional £1.68 million on service delivery costs.
(1.5) Joining up support with the NHS: Building on the joint work between the Council and the NHS over recent years, which has accelerated during the pandemic, it is proposed to join up more care workers with health workers in the community. This will help avoid hospital and care home admissions, and support people to return home more swiftly from hospital through rapid access to integrated health and social care resources. Overall this could save £400,000 a year when the costs of the model are considered.
(1.6) Expanding the range of social care support available: There is scope to extend more choice to people in how their care and support needs can be met. For example, we are working to make direct payments more accessible and easier to manage. Direct payments involve the Council providing a payment to the individual needing care who can then employ a personal assistant to meet their needs rather than this being arranged through the local authority. We also want to increase the range of services available to meet people’s social, respite care and accommodation needs. As part of this, in partnership with Vivo, we plan to grow the Shared Lives service. Shared Lives is a person-centred service, matching people with a carer or carers who will share activities, or their family life and home, meeting the needs of older people, adults with learning disabilities and adults with autism who need support, or support and accommodation, to live full and more independent lives. Overall these proposals are intended to improve service delivery and better meet the needs of service users and could save £600,000 a year when fully implemented.
(1.7) Review of building-based care: We are committed to delivering more care and support services at, or as close to, people’s own homes and communities as possible. We now need to review our building-based services to enable this continued improvement in the range of flexible services on offer. There are some buildings that are underused, do not have modern facilities, and are not close to where care is required. A more detailed consultation on these proposals will take place but, overall, this could save £1.188 million a year if fully implemented.
(1.8) Meeting our core responsibilities: We are already consulting on a new Adult Social Care Charging Policy for non-residential care services to ensure we have a fair and consistent approach to charging for services. In addition, we need to ensure that we are only funding social care services that the Council has a statutory duty to fund. Overall, these proposals could save £1.722 million.
(1.9) Review of care provided by Vivo, our Council-owned care company: We are proposing to work with Vivo to ensure that care is provided at the most appropriate rate. In particular, we are proposing that we work with Vivo to reduce the level of spending above the agreed block contract by maximising capacity within the block contract and, where appropriate, purchase services from other providers. Overall, this could save £500,000 a year.
(1.10) A new model for carer services: We arrange support for carers who play a vital role in our communities. Following consultation with carers, we believe there is an opportunity to redesign the service and make improvements in line with the feedback we get from carers. Overall, this could save £90,000 a year without having a major impact on service delivery.
(1.11) Review of community support: We fund a range of organisations within the community to provide support to individuals to reduce isolation and increase social support. We believe there may be some elements of duplication in this support and the potential to provide this help through technology. We would like to recommission these services with input from the community. We believe this could save £268,000.
Support to children, young people and families
(1.12) Sharing the costs of support with schools: Following a review, we would like to have further conversations with schools about sharing the costs of services we provide at a cost to the Council. This could include a range of services such as school crossing patrols, educational psychologists and administration. This could save the Council £570,000 a year.
(1.13) Home to school transport investment: Further home to school transport will be required as the number of children and young people rises. We will look to make our support as efficient as possible but, at the moment, it is predicted that an additional £528,000 a year will be required.
(1.14) Better targeting of youth services within our communities: We believe that the needs of young people are changing and that there are more effective ways to provide targeted, preventative services to those in the greatest need, which do not require the same level of centre-based delivery that we currently provide. This means more support can be delivered within communities on an outreach basis rather than solely through buildings. We have also secured grant funding from outside the Council, which has enabled us to reduce our budgets for some of our youth workers without impacting on service delivery. Overall this proposal will save £108,000.
(1.15) Preventing the need for more costly support for children’s social care: We have successfully developed a team of intervention workers who focus on preventing children needing to be in our care. We plan to expand this team so we can have a bigger impact which also includes helping to prevent placements breaking down for those children who need to be in our care, therefore reducing the need for more costly placements elsewhere. This initiative alongside other existing preventative services could save £970,000 a year.
(1.16) Additional in-house residential provision for children: We believe by providing more local residential provision for children in care through the Council, rather than out of the borough, we could save around £122,000. This would also ensure more support is provided closer to home, which also helps to prevent placements breaking down.
(1.17) Contract efficiencies in the leaving care service: We have a responsibility to support young people as they leave care up to the age of 25. We believe there is the opportunity to have a more efficient way of buying support by reducing spot purchases and increasing the use of pre-agreed contracts with providers, which could save £250,000.
(1.18) Strengthening our integrated approach across all children’s services: A review will take place to look at the links between early help, education and children’s social care to identify any synergies and opportunities to reduce demand for services and therefore costs. Overall this could save £200,000.
(1.19) Corporate parenting: We have a role to support children in our care as a corporate parent and ensure they have access to the opportunities that all our children should have. We will make a temporary budget of £50,000 permanent to help with this goal.
Public Health Services
(1.20) Public health funding review: We will explore whether all the services currently funded through the public health money we receive from Government reflect the latest priorities and are making the maximum difference. Overall this review could release around £550,000 which can be reinvested to support other activities in the Council that deliver public health goals, including our commitment to sustain leisure and wellbeing services delivered by Brio.
