Lancashire county council publishes scary details of cuts to its care services

by Simon Bottery, Director of Fundraising, Policy and Communications

Lancashire county council has just published its budget, outlining in detail how it plans to cut a quarter of its spending - £179m - over the next three years. For older people using care services it makes scary reading.

The direct savings for 2011 alone include:

• £2.5m by raising the eligibility threshold for adult social care from 'moderate' to 'substantial'. The council has 3,900 people currently assessed as 'moderate' so their care is now at risk.
  
• £1.5m in reducing spending on non-residential social care - a cut of up to 20% in spending on domiciliary care, day care and personal budget. Instead there will be 'greater reliance on universal, preventative and low-level initiatives', 'greater use of telecare' and more focus on 'rehabilitation, reablement and recovery services'
  
• £1.5m cuts in its Supporting People programme of housing support for vulnerable adults


• £1.85m cuts in social-care assessment and management staff costs, leading to a 'delay in non-urgent social work assessments'
  
• £4.2m in increased charges for non-residential care services meaning that some people will pay between £30.75 and £53.80 per day for services that are currently costing them £5. The council estimates that the largest group of users affected will be 5,000 who will pay £11.63 more each week.
  

There are other savings that will have less obvious but potentially drastic effects on services too:

• £1.5m cut from social care training


• £7m saved by reducing the fees paid by the council to care providers. This means organisations providing social care will see their fees cut by 2 percent in 2010. The council says, surely optimistically, that this 'should not affect overall levels of service'.

The council is making cuts across the board, from environment to children's services. You can read its plans in full at http://council.lancashire.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=1051

Across the country, other councils are gearing up to do similar things to Lancashire. Hackney Council in London, for example, is cutting £46m over the next two years. Adult Social Care is being hit by cutting drop-in centres and residential units, and day care is being reduced. Contracts for outsourced services are also being reduced. Staffing levels are being reviewed.

Not all these changes are necessarily bad. The emphasis on reablement and preventative work is welcome, while telecare has potential if the need for social contact is met in other ways. Nonetheless, it has been hard to see this as anything but a major reduction in service provision. For all the coalition government's statements that councils have been funded to maintain social care funding, this is the reality of the average 27% cuts they face over the next four years

Happy New Year.

Stay warm and healthy over winter

Keep Warm Keep Well, a national government campaign targeting the reduction of cold-related illnesses and deaths during winter, offers tips and advice on keeping you warm and well this winter.

The campaign offers a variety of practical help and tips such as how to keep your house effectively insulated so as to reduce heat loss and how to stay healthy and fit during cold spells.

You can also find information on financial assistance, such as grants and benefits, that are available to you to help make your home warmer or simply to assist you in meeting the financial demands of your heating bills.

Keep Warm Keep Well produces informative leaflets that are available for those who want further information on how to stay warm and well through the cold winter months. Look out for them in your local supermarket, GP’s surgery, local pharmacy or Council offices. You can also view all the information online at http://campaigns.direct.gov.uk/keepwarmkeepwell.

For advice and information on the grants that are available call or visit:

• Warm Front Scheme on 0800 316 2805 or visit www.warmfront.co.uk
• Cold Weather Payment by visiting www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk
• Home Heat Helpline on 0800 336699 or visit www.homeheathelpline.org.uk
• Energy Saving Trust on 0800 512012 or visit www.energysavingtrust.org.uk
• National Energy Action by visiting www.nea.org.uk

The potential battle over meals on wheels

by Simon Bottery, Director of Fundraising, Policy and Communications for Independent Age

By coincidence, I heard this week from the chief exec of the organisation that invented meals on wheels and, the next day, from a council that has just scrapped them. WRVS is one of those charities that emerged from government just before the second world war and is now seem as something of a national institution. Its impressive chief executive, Lynne Berry, is busily completing the transformation of the organisation from a vast conglomerate of disparate services to a more focused, directed body. But they still deliver millions of meals on wheels to elderly people each year.

Sue Warr is an (also impressive) manager in Dorset County Council, tackling social exclusion among older people. Dorset has a lot of older people: over 700,000 - well over one quarter of its population (apparently in Christchurch there is a saying that people retire to Christchurch to die and then forget what they came for). Only 189 of them use meals on wheels so the council has a new ‘access to food and nutrition’ project that aims to help more people. Those currently getting meals on wheels will get individual help to identify other ways of getting food and meals.

Dorset clearly takes older people’s issues seriously and Sue described some brilliant work to prevent and deal with social exclusion and loneliness among older people. So Dorset may well be right to think that there are better ways of providing food and nutrition to older people in the county. But I can’t help wondering whether at least some of the 189 people getting meals on wheels were actually very happy with what they were getting and wanted it to continue. It would be reassuring to know that they are happy with the new arrangements. More worryingly, will we see other councils scrapping services such as these to save money, without going to quite the lengths of Dorset to see that the existing service users get a good alternative?