The way social care is delivered is fundamentally changing and London is leading the way. Ian Mitchell reports
For Gill it was an electric bike, for Claudia it was a travel buddy and for Leon it was a game of football.
The move towards personalisation can be traced back to the 2007 ministerial concordat: Putting People First, that set out a 10-year plan services and support they need.
Putting People First defined a fundamental change in thinking about the delivery of social care that recognised that individuals rather than organisations are best placed to choose the support and services they need to improve their well-being.
Personalisation requires both organisations and professionals to help and support individuals to choose the care they actually want, rather than that which might be prescribed for them by a care agency or social worker. This means enabling them, for example, to take the same day-to-day risks that the rest of society take for granted and to maximise their independence and well-being.
To date this transformation has been supported with a three-year (2008-2011) ringfenced grant given to local authorities to enable the structural, organisational and cultural changes needed to make personal choice a reality for service users.
And while there are no plans to provide any further funding beyond 2011, the coalition government has already signalled its support for continuing to develop choice and control for service users, including in its white paper proposals for the NHS (Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS, July 2010).
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PDF version Councils have been deliberately making data unusable, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has said.
In his speech to the Conservative Party conference Maude said the government has already published "a wealth of information" in its transparency drive.
But he said: "we want to go much further".
He said: "I'm sorry to say that some councils spend time and money deliberately making data unusable to anyone else."
In response he said that the government would amend the Freedom of Information Act to make sure data would be reusable.
He said: "All data released through FOI must be in a reusable and machine readable format, available to everyone and able to be exploited for social and commercial purposes."
FAT CAT council bosses have been told how to defend the “wicked” issue of their spiralling salaries by their own union.
The Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (Solace) has published the advice in a list of “wicked issues” on its website.
Many of Britain’s most senior public sector managers and council leaders belong to Solace, which acts as a source of advice and information for its members.
Pay has risen across the country in recent years and some chief executives now get more than £200,000 a year – considerably more than the Prime Minister. Recognising that pay is a political hot potato, a document on the website recommends ways of ducking difficult questions.
It says: “Council chief executives have come under unprecedented attack in past months on the issue of pay. A biting recession and a small number of highly publicised increases when one chief leaves and another fills a role have created a toxic mix.”
Anticipating more assaults, as budget cuts, council job losses, the TaxPayers’ Alliance and new council tax bills focus attention on the issue, it gives members template responses to use against journalists, including Freedom of Information Act enquiries.
“The salaries of the Prime Minister and MPs are not comparable with chief executives of local councils,” it says.
“The jobs are quite different; one is a political leader and the other the strategic management head of a multidepartmental organisation running services.”
Solace then goes on to compare the average £148,000 salary of a metropolitan council chief to the £7.8m earned by the CEO of Spirit Managed Pubs.
Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, said: “Under Labour, CEO’s too often cashed in on the public gravy train, moving from council to council enjoying pay rises that would make a football manager blush.
“Local government needs to come to terms with the reality that the days of the traditional chief executive are over. In this economic climate sharing CEO’s across authorities should become the norm, not the exception.”
In a speech to be given today at the Tory Party Conference, Mr Pickles will say CEOs earning more than £200,000 should take a 10 per cent pay cut.
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/media/2010/10/scottish-sunday-express-h...
Local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) – which are to replace regional development agencies (RDAs) – could get powers over investment, innovation and business support, the Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has revealed. This is being seen as a u-turn because the government had told local authorities that these areas would be handled nationally.
At the same time, after the Northern Business Forum (NBF) said it couldn't back any of the five LEP bids in the north east of England, the Mayor of Middlesbrough Ray Mallon has called the "entirely dishonourable" people responsible for the decision "a bunch of self-serving mavericks more concerned with progressing their individual and organisational agendas than progressing the life chances of the people of the Tees Valley and the wider north east".
Pickles – who reckoned that nearly half of the 57 LEP bids could be approved within days – told a 'fringe' meeting at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham: "We would see [those functions] devolved to the LEPs if the LEPs are saying so. Where the LEPs show real initiative and a real plan then there is no limit to the amount of power we are prepared to give to them."
He went on: "There is not a cigarette paper between [Business Secretary] Vince [Cable] and myself on this issue. There is a misunderstanding that LEPs will just receive money from the regional growth fund. We would not be setting up such an elaborate structure just to distribute £1bn. Without wishing to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, £1bn is neither here nor there. Their function is to push money and sovereignty to local authorities and get some enterprise cracking."
Mallon didn't hold back in his attack on the Northern Business Forum, saying: "It has been made crystal clear by the government that RDAs ... are to be replaced with LEPs more in tune with the needs of their area and more accountable to local people. After extensive consultation and consideration the five councils of Darlington, Middlesbrough, Stockton, Hartlepool and Redcar & Cleveland joined with leading businesses of the area to agree an application for LEP status.
"This would see the public and private sectors in this area join forces to tell government the priorities for investment. Other LEPs would perform a similar role for other areas of the North East and there would be a strategic organisation with responsibility for specific functions best dealt with on a regional basis."
He went on: "The NBF were signatories to that bid which went in on September 6 and now, just four weeks later, they perform a U-turn as the Government prepares to announce which bids have been successful. I believe that the NBF have turned fifth columnists in a deliberate bid to derail the Tees Valley and other LEP bids in order that they can then fill the gap. This would effectively see the north east revert back to an RDA system where all funds are allocated to a giant regional quango based in Newcastle instead of directly to LEP areas. A quango that would no doubt employ those behind this u-turn. Let there be no misunderstanding, it is not the public sector that has failed to get its act together on this matter, it is certain elements of the private sector who seem happy to play fast and loose with the economic prosperity of this area if it helps them get their way."
Disabled adults of working age could bear the brunt of forthcoming adult care cuts because of council efforts to equalise the value of care packages between older and younger users, research has found.
Councils will come under a legal obligation not to discriminate against older people from 2012, and previous research has found this could add £2bn to annual care bills in England because of traditionally higher spending on packages for disabled adults compared with older people with similar needs.
But this figure relies on councils "levelling up" the value of care packages for older people. However, a Freedom of Information survey by former chief executive of Bolton Council Brian Collinge, who has a learning disabled son, found some councils were planning to level down the value of care packages for younger adults.
Collinge quizzed 38 councils on their approach to setting up resource allocation systems (RAS), which use needs assessment questionnaires to calculate the value of users' personal budgets.
Most respondents (24) had based their RAS on guidance published last year by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, which said councils should use a single RAS for all client groups and that this could help identify and reduce discrimination.
Ten of these councils said they were using their RAS to equalise the value of care packages between client groups and eight said learning or physically disabled adults were likely to face cuts as a result.
Though the Adass guidance does not specify whether councils should level up or down, separate Social Care Institute for Excellence guidance on ending age discrimination in social care urges councils to "level up resources between groups as necessary to ensure age equality".
However, one council quizzed by Collinge said equalisation could only be achieved by cutting resources for certain groups "due to the severe financial pressures being experienced across adult services".
"If you level down you are going to condemn people with severe learning disabilities to life in a home," said Collinge, who said councils should use different RAS for people with lifelong conditions and those who enter the care system late in life, claiming their needs were not comparable.
"The best example is deafness," he said. "Some older people become completely deaf but it's nothing like being born deaf. But if aspects of deafness are part of the needs assessment they will be treated the same."
Mencap head of campaigns and policy David Congdon said the prospect of councils levelling down the value of care packages for disabled adults "would be a seriously retrograde step for disabled people", and a "danger that we should resist".
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2010/10/15/115584/Working-age-di...
Local control of health and social care budgets would save councils billions, says LGA
Councils could save £6bn a year if they had local control over integrated health and social care budgets, according to the Local Government Association.
The LGA has published a "white paper" setting out how councils could make savings ahead of the spending review, due later this month.
The report, titled "Local budgets: Building the Big Society from the neighbourhood up," advocates the devolution of power through local budgets, which would allow councils to reduce administration costs and join up local services.
"Britain's new government has chosen to raise high expectations among localists," said Baroness Eaton, chair of the LGA.
"It is clear to me that there are achievable savings available from local budgeting over the spending review period and beyond that could protect the frontline services people rely on."
Integrated health and social care budgets would allow councils to cut bureaucracy and waste by enabling a co-ordinated approach to hospital admissions and long-term care, the report found.
And targeted work with families likely to be a drain on a wide range of public services, including social services, the NHS and police, would be simpler with a local budget.
"We should cut 100% of the waste, red tape and junketing before we even contemplate reductions in frontline services to communities," said the report.
"The spending review should make savings before it starts to make cuts."
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2010/10/04/115483/control-of-car...