Adult social care take-over planned

TOWN Hall chiefs at Warrington have agreed in principle to create a social enterprise to take over adult social care in-house services – which currently have an annual budget of £8.6 million.
Members of the borough council’s executive board have agreed that a business plan for the option of transferring the services to a social enterprise will now be developed and put forward for consideration by the board at its November meeting.
A review into the services looked at how they could be re-designed and redeveloped and scrutinised to make them more sustainable while continuing to meet the needs of current and future service users, against the back drop of the current challenging financial climate.
A number of other options were investigated and assessed including keeping the services in-house and asking public/private sector companies to provide them.
In addition, there was consultation with staff and service users, carers and their families and key stakeholders about their priorities and which options best supported their needs.
Cllr Pat Wright (pictured), lead member for health, wellbeing and adult social care,
said: “Given the challenging financial position, we simply don’t have the option to do nothing.
“This all follows on from the Big Care Debate in 2012 when we started looking at how we could maintain services in the face of increasing demand and increasingly limited resources.
“We recognise how important these services are to people and so it is only right that we look at the needs of our service users and investigate and put forward the best options that will allow us to continue to support them and protect the most vulnerable in society both and now and in the future.
“We certainly do not take these decisions lightly and have carried out thorough assessments into the various options with a view to putting forward sustainable solutions.”
In house services include residential care for older people, learning disability respite accommodation, specialist day care services and Care Call.
LiveWire and Golden Gates Housing have expressed an interest in working with the council on developing the services so while agreeing in principle to the development of a social enterprise, the council will have dialogue with them and any other appropriate interested organisations.
The council’s medium term financial plan for the current year includes savings of £651,000 on the existing service, which has already delivered savings of more than £2.1 million.