14:40
Contact Officer: John Jackson – Director for Social & Community Services, tel (01865) 323574
The Director will give a presentation to the Committee which will provide a high level overview of the services provided by the Directorate and the challenges which will need to be addressed to meet the target.
The Committee is invited to receive a presentation from the Director.
Minutes:
The Director for Social & Community Services gave a presentation to the Committee which provided a high level overview of the services provided by the Directorate and the challenges which would need to be addressed to meet the savings target. A copy of the presentation is appended to these Minutes and to the signed Minutes.
With regard to the finer detail on the slides, the Committee noted that ‘Income’ was the money paid by non-eligible service users and that the gross spend on Supporting People was not from the Directorate’s budget as the Director was not the decision maker (it is wholly grant funded and overseen by the Commissioning Body). However, a significant amount of Supporting People money funded services in Adult Social Care, for example, a £5m contribution to Learning Disability Services. There was limited scope to increase the Directorate’s income although there would be increased charges for home support and day services. The major demographic pressures were coming from older people and the increasing number of young people with a profound disability reaching adulthood and living for longer.
The key point was that the county council needs to find £200m from its non-school budgets (£500m) which is 40% of the budget. All services need to look at how they can contribute to this. However, it would be important to protect those areas of spending which will cost the County Council more money in the longer term if they are reduced in the short term (eg support for carers). The government spending review would report on 20 October and more information would be released late November/early December.
The Committee noted that there was a statutory requirement to meet eligible care needs but that the Directorate has discretion regarding how to meet those needs. The Directorate faced significant challenges in making further efficiency savings but would be focusing on prevention and early intervention to limit the need for social care and therefore save money, ensuring that there were still sufficient resources to deal with safeguarding and other crises and using the remaining resources on those with the greatest needs.
A member of the Committee expressed her concern regarding the drop in the amount of money the Directorate was contributing towards residential care home fees (reduced by £25 a week), and the possible impact on safety, adding that constituents had already told her that they would either have to pay the top up fee or take their relative(s) out of the home.
The Director responded that the Contracts Team carefully monitored safety and if a home received a poor rating from the Care Quality Commission the Directorate treated it as a safeguarding issue. However, there did not appear to be a correlation between the amount of money charged by a home and the quality of a home. Reducing fees for residential care for older people was a difficult issue as there were limits as to how far prices could be squeezed. Keeping people in their own homes or moving into a different house, using telecare and alert services was often a good approach as many people would not need to go into residential homes with the right equipment and adaptations. The ageing successfully strategy emphasised the need for people to prepare in good time for their old age.
At the request of the Committee, the Director for Social & Community Services undertook to provide the following information to all members of the Committee:
· the number of people receiving assistance under the council’s Adult Placement Service (“Shared Living”) (Oxfordshire is viewed as one of the best examples in the country); and
· any empirical evidence (if available) on whether the number of adults with mental health problems has increased over the past few years (dementia is increasing but it not classed as a mental illness).