Adult services ensuring people get the right support
As cuts in care remain a topical subject in the national media, Shropshire Council are committed to ensuring our most frail and elderly residents get the support that is right for them.
Social care is an important issue for everyone, regardless of age, health or personal circumstances and we want to ensure our most vulnerable people, their families and carers get help as soon as they can.
We are proud in Shropshire to have been nationally recognised by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) as the best performing council, with 94 per cent of services measured by CQC meeting the requirements.
However, there is no getting away from the fact that, as a result of financial pressures* in adult social care we, alongside other councils, face lots of challenges over the coming months and years.
We particularly feel this in Shropshire as we have a large and sparsely populated rural geography, with a disproportionately older and growing population which is higher than the national average – 23% of residents in Shropshire are 65+, compared to the English average of 18%. Therefore, as our county’s population gets older, the demand for our services increases. Also the average gross weekly cost of long term residential and nursing care for adults in Shropshire is £703.54, compared to England’s average of £666.37.
Indeed, we’ve known this financial climate for quite some time and have prepared a long term plan to help people in Shropshire, by supporting and promoting stronger, more resilient communities. Our primary focus is about how we can deliver the best outcomes for people at that time when they’re having a crisis or are in need.
Lee Chapman, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for adults, said:
“We want to enable people’s aspirations to flourish, whether those aspirations are to cook their own meals, go shopping or find employment.
“By investing a lot in prevention, we aim to help people to live healthier, longer and more independent lives in their own communities and homes and be safe from harm; and do this in a way that means they have to rely on us less. We’ve also integrated our services and are working much more closely with our health, community and voluntary colleagues to support independent living. It’s about how we can make best use of the resources we have to continue to benefit and support elderly people across Shropshire.”
The council has adopted an early help and prevention approach that enables people to get the right support at the right time, focussing on what people can do rather than what they can’t.
We’ve done this by redesigning and fundamentally changing how we support people when they contact us. We want people to find the information and advice they need as quickly and easily as possible. They can do this by visiting our recently-launched Shropshire Choices website which provides advice and information on support available in Shropshire, or by contacting our dedicated First Point of Contact number where they can discuss their needs in confidence with a professional adviser.
The adviser will identify whether someone is eligible for a service at first point of contact, and signpost individuals to other relevant services which would help meet their needs, or invite them to Let’s Talk Local meeting. Let’s Talk Local is an opportunity for the public to meet informally with someone who is knowledgeable about social care issues and what is going on in their area. These meetings, which can either be on a one-to-one basis, or in a group session, take place in the majority of Shropshire’s market towns on a weekly basis. The sessions are held in a range of local venues (including church halls, community centres, town halls etc) – anywhere that people can get to.
So now, when people contact us, we are able to satisfactorily resolve whatever it was that was causing them a problem at that time for over 75 per cent of people.
For those people who need more help, it means that they can enter the system earlier and receive the right support to enable them to become as independent as they can be.
Further information
*Shropshire Council’s spend on the adult services purchasing budget is estimated to rise by 11% or £6.6m between 2015/16 and the current year 2016/17. In reality, the impact is greater still, as the budget available last year was itself £6m below actual spend, resulting in an overspend that had to be managed by cuts and savings delivered from other service areas across the council.
Looking to the future, we are currently expecting adult services spend to continue to grow from existing levels by around 8% per annum. Much of this spend is driven by the older people population in Shropshire, which is almost 30% higher than the national average and is growing at a greater rate.
Following the Local Government Settlement for 2016/17, councils were provided with the power to precept an additional 2% on council tax purely to fund adult social care. In Shropshire we implemented this precept alongside a general increase of 1.99%, resulting in a total council tax increase of 3.99% (£46.47 per annum at Band D) for 2016/17. The 2% precept for adult social care in total generated an additional £2.4m per annum, compared to the £6m growth in costs (or the £12m increase in budget requirement) over the same period.
In Shropshire, income derived from the number of households and our current council tax financial tax base does not correlate to the cost of funding adult social care. In the future, therefore, the gap between what we can raise and what we have to pay for will only grow further under this model.
The national picture suggests that the balance of councils across the country are in the fortunate position that their ability to grow the funds from the 2% precept on their tax base outstrips the growth in adult social care costs.
