Overview

We need to inform you that following a legal challenge, we are re-consulting on one of the original proposals - Proposal 1: Assessment & Support Planning and use of the Better Care Fund

This is our Adult Social Work service.  Social Workers’ responsibilities include:

•      Carrying out the statutory assessments  for adults and carers of adults.

•      Discharging statutory duties under Mental Health legislation.

•      Discharging statutory duties under Mental Capacity legislation.

•      Undertaking Fairer Charging and Charging for Residential Accommodation Guide (CRAG) assessments.

•      Adult safeguarding.

We are working with the NHS and  Birmingham Health & Wellbeing Board to develop a more joined up approach to caring for older people.  This is supported through the Government’s Better Care Fund Programme which aims to transform health and social care into intergrated services that work really well together.  It creates a local single pooled budget to encourage  the NHS and local government to work more closely together around people, placing  people’s well-being as the focus of health and care services.

We are not proposing to change the amount spent on assessment and support planning.  The  joint working resulting from the Government’s Better Care Fund Programme is anticipated to provide some savings.   These savings combined with some money previously set aside by the NHS to support adult social care will enable us to keep this budget at its current level  for the next two years.  

This information was repeated in Factsheet ASC1 that supported the council-wide 2015/16 ‘Budget Consultation 2015+’ along with the following additional information.  If you had not seen the factsheet, you may have been unaware of this when you responded to the consultation question

“The service will need to make some changes, even though we are not proposing to change the total amount spent on it. This is because the workload of the service (the number of assessments it needs to undertake), will increase in the next few years due to the growing population and new laws.

As a result, we plan to make the ‘customer journey’ more efficient, cost effective and professional. This will lead to a better service for Birmingham citizens but will result in changes for staff. We will try to reduce the impact by two-way communication with staff about the future operating model which is already taking place and will continue.”

This information was not in the Directorate for People consultation document and you may therefore have been unaware of it. 

Therefore we would like to take this opportunity to ask the Proposal 1 question again.  This will give you the chance to share your views in the light of the full information.

Proposal 1 Question: Do you agree with the proposal to use money saved through joint working to maintain current levels of spend in assessment and support planning?

If you would like to make any comments, please make sure your comments reach us by the closing date of 3rd October 2016.

Please note: Sending us your comments is entirely optional and your comments will remain anonymous.

After the closing date, we will write a report of the findings for the Cabinet Member for Health and Social Care. Your views are important to us and we are very grateful to everyone who takes the time and trouble to contribute.

Further information

Birmingham City Council Budget Consultation 2015+ Final Report ‘Responding to the challenge, looking to the Future’ 20^th January 2015.

http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/budgetviews

Better Care Fund: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/better-care-fund

Birmingham Better Care: http://birminghambettercare.com/