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ITEM EX16

EXECUTIVE – 20 JULY 2004

INVEST TO SAVE BUDGET BID: IMPROVING THE HOUSING ADAPTATION PROCESS

Report by Director for Social & Health Care

Introduction

  1. It is proposed that Oxfordshire County Council, via Social & Health Care, should be the lead organisation, working in partnership with the five PCTs and the five District Councils in Oxfordshire, in an application for funding through an Invest to Save Budget Bid to "Improve the Housing Adaptation Process for Disabled People".

  2. The Invest to Save Budget is a joint Treasury/Cabinet Office initiative which provides support for projects which will increase joint working between government departments, local government, voluntary sector and other agencies to identify innovative ways of delivering better quality public services on a better value for money basis. An announcement of a Bid Round 7 is awaited from Government, who have promised a statement in "early summer". It is anticipated that there will be 2 month window in which to submit an Expression of Interest, which if successful, would be followed by a detailed Bid 3 months later. Funding is assumed to be available in 2005.

    3. Background

  3. Housing adaptations to help disabled people living at home in Oxfordshire currently take an average of 29 weeks to approve and implement. Major building works such as extensions can take up to 2.5 years to completion. Social & Health Care and its potential partners who are involved in the adaptations process agree that this is not acceptable.

  4. The proposals (see below) are a result of the Occupational Therapy Efficiency Review carried out in 2003. Of eleven recommendations in the Review, five directly feature in the Bid, and two others benefit. Each of the themes within the project is now found separately in ODPM Good Practice Guidelines.

    5. The Proposals

  5. The basis of the proposed partnership bid is the achievement of improvements in the process of identifying and commissioning housing adaptations in order to save time and costs and to enable people to remain safely at home by:

    • Use of Assistive Technologies, particularly Telecare, to provide improved safety and response, allowing clients to become more independent and reducing the need for care visits.

    • Improved Information Technology that reduces administration and enables progress through the whole system to be monitored more effectively and provides information to inform clients and carers of progress.

    • Access to a web-based Disability Housing Register. This allows matching of available property to client needs facilitating speedy moves to more suitable accommodation, and also prevents the unnecessary removal of completed adaptations being followed by new installations nearby.

    • Seeking to recruit contractors to provide economic solutions, addressing the lack of availability of good quality contractors which has been highlighted as a major constraint..

  1. Some of the proposals will involve amendments to current procedures and may need to be subject to formal agreement. Details of these are as yet unknown and therefore partners are being requested to agree "in principle" support at this stage.

  2. The proposals are considered to meet the Invest to Save Budget that projects must be "innovative". Combining the range of themes across a wide partnership is both logical and challenging.

    3. Financial Implications

  3. The total cost of the proposed Bid scheme will be approximately £1m. Of this sum, 25% will be required to be provided by the partners, all of whom, under the Invest to Save Rules, must benefit from the scheme. It is proposed that the County Council will initially fund the £250,000 partner contribution, on the basis that 50% (£125,000) would subsequently be reclaimed from the District Councils’ share of savings from the scheme. This would be split between District Councils at an average of £25,000 each, with PCTs providing access to their patient "tracking" system.

  4. The net cost to the County Council would be more than offset by predicted savings. It is likely that the initial County Council contribution could be defrayed from savings in the first year. If necessary however any shortfall would need to be covered by a supplementary estimate, with the equivalent amount returned to balances from savings in the following year.

    5. Savings

  5. Full details of savings, and how these will be distributed and accrue to partners and other organisations (such as housing associations), are being developed, but payback is projected in less than one year. Substantial savings will accrue to District & City Councils and Housing Associations in particular from use of the Disability Housing Register.

  6. It is envisaged that Social & Health Care’s share of savings would be re-invested in occupational therapy services and to fund the IT Developments included in this project during 2005. Considerable savings in the number of care visits would help alleviate the severe shortage of care workers currently experienced, and would protect the service’s ability to respond to the forecast increase in older people, especially those over 85.

  7. Improvements in the process will bring about increased demand in the short term for adaptations. Partial funding to contribute to clearing these is included as pump priming until full benefits of the Housing Register and other themes are fully realised.

  8. A key part of the delivery of the proposals is finding additional, good quality contractors to be able to handle the short-term increase in activity and ongoing work on which the Social & Health Care benefits are dependent.

    9. Timescale

  9. Savings will accrue almost immediately from use of the Disability Housing Register. It is expected that full benefits from other themes such as improved contractor delivery will take up to the third year to be fully realised. As the proposals are based on facilitating changes in process, once these changes are in place they will be permanent and self-sustaining.

    10. Taking the Programme Forward if ISB Funding is not Available

  10. As part of an Expression of Interest, the partnership is required to state if and how the project could be taken forward in the event that Invest to Save Budget funding is not available, either in total or in full. Proposals to facilitate this are being prepared, but these have to assume that the project would take considerably longer and that not all of the themes might be achieved without County Council investment and providing incentives to partners who have restricted budgets.

    11. RECOMMENDATIONS

  11. The Executive is RECOMMENDED to:

          1. approve in principle the preparation and submission of an Expression of Interest to obtain Invest to Save Budget funding to improve the housing adaptation process on the basis outlined in the report;

          2. agree in particular an initial County Council contribution of £250,000 on behalf of the Bid partners subject to agreement with District Councils guaranteeing that 50% of that contribution can be reclaimed from savings in the costs which would otherwise have been incurred by those councils before residual savings are utilised by them;

          3. authorise the Director for Social & Health Care, in consultation with partners and with the Executive Members for Community Care & Health and Children & Young People:

            1. to approve the Expression of Interest document for submission via the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to the Treasury and Cabinet Office; and

            2. providing that the Expression of Interest is successful, to approve a Full Bid presentation.

 

CHARLES WADDICOR
Director for Social & Health Care

Background papers: Nil

Contact Officer: Sandra Stapley, Operations Manager, Older People & Physical Disabilities, Tel (01865) 854487

July 2004

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