Home Care vs Care Homes

Care for the Elderly is back in the news in Bristol. Whereas earlier in the year problems with the internal Council Home Care service led to a transfer of power from the Liberal Democrats to a Labour minority administration, now a failure to deal with the underlying financial problems in the Adult Community Care Department is driving dramatic cuts in the level of residential care.

At the Cabinet meeting held on Thursday, 15th November (webcast here), the various Labour executive members and the Council Leader faced astonishing criticism in response to the proposals. The criticism came from UNISON, the GMB, various councillors and Geoff Gollop, Conservative chair of the Adult Community Care Select Committee. Amusingly, the Bristol Evening Post* summarised this for their front page as:

"relatives and care staff...applauded when Liberal Democrat concillor Jon Rogers called [the proposals] "hollow words".

(Great bit of reporting there, guys.)

A cynical observer might put forward the hypothesis that - having failed to do anything to control the costs of Home Care - the Adult Community Care department is now having to balance its budget by shutting down residential homes, so that future care will be delivered primarily through...Home Care. The Labour administration are stuck with an internal supplier that they are politically obliged to fund, so they're using it to maximum capacity at the expense of other, more appropriate services.

That's the cynical view, but we won't know if that's really the case until the next budget book comes out in January 2008. Geoff Gollop can be seen on the webcast raising the possibility that there is an "enforced optimism" amongst council officers about the proposed change, leading to a blindness to potential risks.

Even worse, Geoff raises concerns that the financial model for the new service was generated by comparing the internal costs for high intensity needs (e.g. care recipients with dementia) with the independent-sector costs for low intensity needs (e.g. those who are still mobile and active), which unsurprisingly would demonstrate what a great saving could be made in the independent sector. Are Labour comparing apples with oranges?

I'm looking forward to hearing more information about the proposed changes from Annie Hudson, Director of Adult Community Care, who will be speaking at the Rotary Club of Bristol on Monday 19th Nov.

*Without wishing to give too much linkage to the Post in one day, I have to say they were also rather cheeky in saying the meeting was web cast live here on the Evening Post site [my emphasis] when in fact the webcast was run by the council using their new Public-I equipment, and the Post's involvement was limited to adding a URL to the External Links section of their story. What a way to give credit where credit is due.