To advise the Committee of the financial position for the Adult Social Care budget within the Joint Commissioning Directorate, and the Strategic Housing budget within the Sustainable Communities Directorate for the period to 30 November 2010. The report provides the variations against budget and a projected outturn for the year.

The Committee noted a report on the financial position for the Adult Social Care and Strategic Housing revenue budgets for the period to 30^th November 2010.

The Principal Accountant reported that the current forecast outturn for November 2010 had predicted an overspend of £3.81m for Adult Social Care, while Strategic Housing would come in on budget.  A detailed Recovery Plan was appended, which outlined the targeted savings of within Adult Social Care of £2m.

The Principal Accountant went on to say that following saving that had already been made, there was a balance of £876k to be achieved by the end of the year.  She outlined the areas where the budget was under pressure and remarked that one of the main areas was that of the projection for residential, nursing, and domiciliary care, which amounted to a total of £248k.  As fewer personal budgets had been approved than had been budgeted for, there had been a saving of £139k.  As a result of reassessments of clients, the Shaw contract for residential care had decreased and the anticipated increase in client contributions was £70k for the year.

The Principal Accountant said that the Interim Director was now attending monthly budget clinics and was actively involved in cost improvement plans that were outlined in the report before the Committee.

The Interim Director of Adult Social Services said that there was a need to look more strategically at the services that were being delivered, and how they could be more efficiently managed.  A complete rethink of service provision was required in order to ensure that services were affordable to those on individualised budgets.  There was also a need to give consideration as to how the people who were self funding could be supported to help them remain living independently. 

In the ensuing discussion, the following points were made:

·          That the Council would be in a position to shoulder some of the basic administrative work for those on individual budgets. 

·          In reply to a question from a Member about the number of long term carers over the age of eighty in the County, the Interim Director said that there were a number of adults with a learning disability between 40-55 years of age who were being cared for in the County whose needs had not yet been addressed in order to allow them to live more independently.  Discussions were in hand with providers to offer shared tenancies to these people, as a large number of them still lived with their families.  The carers concerned after would still be in a position to shape and plan the care, but would be able to retire from undertaking care on a daily basis.

·          In reply to a question regarding the Shaw Healthcare contract, the Interim Director said that this was a long term contract.  The Council is working actively with the company to diversify to address the needs that the Service had.

·          In reply to a Member, she went on to say that Supporting People funding would no longer be a separate Area Based Grant.  Work has been underway with providers since November 2010 to undertake impact assessments in the light of budget reductions.  The schemes currently support over 4,000 people.  The work has been undertaken to review current support.  Some schemes will be decommissioned, some will be recommissioned more effectively and others will continue with improved outcome measures.

·          In reply to a question, the Principal Accountant said that  the data before the Committee had been produced using the existing CEDAR system.  The information produced by the system had been improved, and there was greater engagement with the services and budget managers which would help with forecasting.  Work was underway with the Aggresso system in order to produce even more accurate and timely reports.  New cost centres were being set up and the manner in which forecasting was undertaken was being reviewed.  Data cleaning of Framworki was being undertaken in order to ensure that payments in Framworki were the same as those under the present system.  The new system would be in place by 1 April.

RESOLVED:

THAT:

                  (a)           the report be noted; and;

(b)                     the delivery of the recovery plan to mitigate the level of overspend would take place.