Call for care in the community rethink as big budget cuts bite
THE ORGANISATION tasked with delivering health and social care in Argyll and Bute will have to make £14 million worth of cuts in the next financial year, meaning it won’t be able to deliver its strategic plan.
The Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) has to deliver additional savings of between £5 million and £6 million on top of the £8 million already planned for 2018-2019.
However, the situation could have been worse. The HSCP was anticipating savings totalling £18.1 million.
Argyll and Bute Council’s policy lead for health and social care Kieron Green said: ‘It’s a very difficult budget. It’s looking like there’s not going to be sufficient resources available to deliver our strategic plan.’
Former councillor and Oban resident Neil MacIntyre thinks how care in the community is delivered needs to be re-organised.
‘We can’t keep struggling on like this,’ he said.
‘The hospitals can’t fill nursing vacancies and care companies can’t get staff.
‘The idea of care in the community is great, if you have the money and the staff to do it.
‘We need to rethink how we look after everyone in the community. I don’t think we can deliver everyone getting individual care at home. There’s not enough of us to do it.
‘The best thing we can do to sort out the problem of lack of staff is to build a new care home so staff can look after more people in one area.
The idea of care in the community is great, if you have the money and staff to do it Former councillor and Oban resident Neil MacIntyre
‘The distances we are asking people to cover is crazy. We are a rural area.’
Mr MacIntyre would also like to see the community involved in the decision-making.
‘It’s a difficult situation, but I think everyone has to be involved in these decisions. These decisions are too big and too important for us not to have a say. Why isn’t the community involved in some of this planning? I think there’s going to be massive decisions, but what are they? Surely we should all be involved.’
Mr Green added: ‘Within Argyll and Bute, we want to provide services locally for people. We want to provide them in such a way that people don’t have to go to a hospital or go into a care home if we can deliver services to them by providing care in their own homes and encouraging people to retain their independence.
‘We are working on it. We have had a few meetings already.’
Caroline Whyte, chief financial officer of the HSCP, said: ‘While this improvement to the financial position is clearly welcomed, the fact remains we still have a very large budget gap and will require to identify and deliver new savings as well as continuing to meet increasing demand for health and social care services and rising costs due to inflation.
‘It is particularly difficult for the HSCP to plan for service changes in the future with a continually changing financial picture, as we are reliant on annual funding allocations from the council and health board.’
Proposed changes to services are being reviewed to address the budget gap.
‘However, it is clear at this stage some of those proposed service changes will not be in line with our strategic plan objectives,’ Mrs Whyte added.
‘These will potentially pose the Integrated Joint Board (IJB) with very difficult decisions to make with conflicting priorities in relation to maintaining quality of care, meeting treatment and waiting time performance standards, and ensuring a balanced budget.’
The papers will be made public on Wednesday March 21 and will be presented to the IJB on Wednesday March 28, when the board will consider approving the changes.