Agenda item

Adult Care & Community Wellbeing 2018/19 Final Budget Outturn

(To receive a report by Emma Farley, Strategic Finance Manager, which sets out the 2018/19 final budget outturn for Adult Care and Community Wellbeing)

Minutes:

Consideration was given to a report which set out the 2018/19 final budget outturn for Adult Care and Community Wellbeing (AC&CW).  The Adult Care outturn was £212.963m, an under-spend of £2.019m (0.94%) against a budget of £214.982m.

 

Officers were congratulated on producing a balanced budget, and it was highlighted that there were many more complex cases than in the past, particularly in relation to discharges.

 

Members were provided with an opportunity to ask questions to the officers present in relation to the information contained within the report and some of the points raised during discussion included the following:

·         In relation to Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS), a new model for authorising deprivations of liberty in care was expected going forward as Parliament had passed legislation to replace the current Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.  It was expected to come into force in October 2020 and would be known as the Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS).  It was noted that Lincolnshire was one of the few councils who no longer had a backlog of cases, but there would be no additional funding from Government for the changes.

·         It was commented that Government funding for Adult Social Care had dropped since 2010, and it was queried how the directorate would spend extra money if it was available.  Members were advised that a report by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Select Committee had just been published entitled "Social Care Funding: Time to End a National Scandal" which set out the premise that Adult Social Care was substantially under-funded.  If the authority did receive additional funding it would be for the Council to decide how to spend it, however recommendations from the Executive Director would fall into three broad groupings – (1) prevention, in particular those that had a low level of need; (2) increase of the pay rates for care workers, as there were 20,000 care workers in Lincolnshire and they did not always get recognition for the difficult job they did; and (3) increasing the amount of time that staff had to do their jobs, as time was a very expensive commodity in health and social care.

·         It needed to be recognised that Lincolnshire had a relatively stable service, and it did a lot of joint working with the health service, district council and a lot of what the authority did would not be possible without these partnerships.

·         It was confirmed that there was a training provision for carers.  The authority spent around £2.4m on block contracts with Carers First, who were commissioned to support the authorities with different activities.  There was an estimated 80,000 carers in Lincolnshire (including family and friends) and the authority was engaged with about 10,000 of them.  The authority had invested in employment support for carers, as evidence suggested that if carers were supported in work they would be able to continue with their caring responsibilities.

·         In terms of benchmarking, Lincolnshire's overall expenditure was in the lowest quartile for the region.  The commissioning model worked very well for the authority and Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire were cited as examples where the unit cost was higher than Lincolnshire's.

 

RESOLVED

 

1.    That the Adults and Community Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee note the final budget outturn for 2018/19.

2.    That the House of Lords Economic Affairs Select Committee's report "Social Care Funding: Time to End a National Scandal" be circulated to members of the Committee for information.

Supporting documents:

 

 
 
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