Agenda item
Adult Social Care Budget Issues
The Budget Panel will receive a presentation on issues relating to the Adult Social Care Budget.
Minutes:
Martin Cheeseman (Director, Housing and Community Care) gave a presentation and answered questions from councillors on the adult social care budget and forecast for 2009/10. He reported that the net budget was £87.7m (£109.2m gross), with a relatively small overspend of £127,000 currently forecast. The department was seeking to reduce the predicted overspend, but in general this budget was volatile and demand-led, with key issues and risks. The previous year’s overspend of £1.2m had arisen in part as a result of one-off expenditure on IT, but the consolidation of housing and community care finance had now strengthened financial control. Longer-term pressures on current and future budgets included demographic changes, possible future legislative changes and the cost of managing the personalisation of care services. On the other hand, Brent was at the lower end in a comparison of London Boroughs’ spending on adult social care as a proportion of overall Council spending. The transformation of adult social care was a gold project in Brent’s improvement and efficiency strategy, with a realistic savings target of £1.4m. A focus of transformation was to do as much as possible to prevent need and to maximise the independence of service users. Alternatives to residential care were being looked at, for example. Less dependent options tended to be the most cost effective, and a comparison of the spending of London Boroughs showed that the more an authority spent on assessment, the less it spent on residential care. Currently too many people were going straight into residential care from hospital, and there had been a history of a disjointed approach between partners in this area. In future no one would move straight to residential care from hospital without intermediate assessment. This would provide an estimated saving of £600,000 over a full year. Shared procurement would also deliver savings. One of the biggest challenges remained the personalisation agenda and the need to respond to changing provision as a result. Progress was being made and, while it was slower than had been anticipated by the professionals, the outcome would be positive.
Martin Cheeseman reported that in general within the adult social care budget there were opportunities to make changes and control spending, but that more would be known half-way through the year. He informed the Panel that, all other things being equal, with demand as currently predicted and in the context of the current financial framework, it should be possible for the department to be within its allocated budget by the year end.
Answering questions on the personalisation of social care and individual budgets for service users, Martin Cheeseman acknowledged that predicting the pattern of purchasing was a challenge, and that there would come a point where the twin-tracking of services became expensive. Asked if he believed that the personalisation agenda could bring savings, he informed the Panel that, while initial estimates had indicated that there would be considerable savings, it was quite possible that it could turn out to be cost-neutral. Savings tended to be made with the first 10-20% of service users moving onto individual budgets, and there would be savings if and when 100% was achieved, but analysing the costs and dealing with the challenges of twin tracking in the interim was a challenge. No one disagreed on the final goal of the personalisation agenda, but achieving it would not be easy.
The Chair thanked Martin Cheeseman for his presentation, and commended amount of thought that had clearly been put into managing the budget and service provision in the medium and long term.
RESOLVED:
that the report be noted.