Agenda item

The Strategic Director for Social Care and Education submits a presentation to provide an overview of the service and key challenges.

The Deputy City Mayor for Social Care, Health and Community Safety introduced the item, highlighting that Adult Social Care is not a service commonly raised for discussion by residents but is a huge financial resource on the Local Authority’s budget to ensure individuals receive the relevant support to live the lives they would like.

The Director for Adult Social Care & Safeguarding and Director for Adult Social Care and Commissioning provided presented the overview in which it was noted that:

·       The Adult Social Care vision is drawn from Social Care Future with the Department’s role being to make the vision a reality.

·       Adult Social Care is a statutory function with duties and obligations outlined in the Care Act 2014. The Local Authority has a duty to provide advice, information and statutory support where an individual has an eligible need. Support may come in the form of providing equipment, short-term reablement services or long-term support. Adult Social Care is means tested whereby financial assessments will determine required contributions. 

·       In the financial year 2023/24, almost 19.5k contacts were made to the service, though not all required support – 13k were relevant to adult social care. On 31 March 2024, around 5k individuals were receiving long term support with a split across communities.

·       The service work with an ethnically diverse and comparatively young population. There is a higher proportion of individuals of working age drawing on support in Leicester than nationally. The presentation provides a summary of people the service work with, with much more performance indicators available.

·       Adult Social Care has the largest Council spend with a £215m gross budget, including £65m income primarily generated through the NHS and charges to individuals. Unit rates are low and care packages are smaller than average but the service supports more people than other areas. Adult Social Care is generally delivered by the private market and the Local Authority contracts with external providers or issue direct payments to individuals to source support. Preventative services such as reablement account for 5% of the budget.

·       A strength-based approach is taken by the service, putting individuals at the centre of care to identify outcomes and solutions. The service aims to connect individuals to services and take a preventative approach to alleviate the need and reliance for statutory services.

·       Formal assessments of an individual’s care needs follow a linked conversation model to understand what matters to the individual and their carers/families in line with statutory guidance, and to determine outcomes and support plans.

·       Key partner relationships are vital to the support of the service and the Local Authority is proud of its commitment and involvement with co-production which has been recognised nationally. It is also a learning organisation, partnering with agencies to continue to learn and deliver best practise.

·       Adult Social Care has significant challenges, including financial constraints with increasing spend and cuts to council funding along with other pressures on partner funding and the general cost of living crisis.

·       The former government also set out a strategy for social care reforms, but many were paused and not implemented, for example a cap on care costs. The CQC assessment was however introduced in April 2024 and the Local Authority is now subject to inspection following over ten years of self-regulation.

The Chair thanked officers for the overview, noting the enormity of Adult Social Care.

AGREED:  

·       The Commission noted the report.