Council begs ministers for more care cash

ARGYLL’S health and social care board is taking a begging bowl to Holyrood as it faces a £2.4m budget gap this year.

The Health and Social Care Partnership’s (HSCP) most controversial cost-saving proposals, to cut council-run care homes, day care and learning disability centres, were rejected by the Integrated Joint Board (IJB) last month, following public outrage when the plans were leaked.

For people who work within and use these services, redesign means closure and more than 400 potential job losses.

A fortnight ago the IJB’s vice chairman councillor Kieron Green warned Oban Community Council the deficit had not gone away and could come back in ‘a different form’.

The IJB has until their meeting on Wednesday May 30 at Kilmory to plan another solution.

But council leader Aileen Morton told Argyll and Bute Council’s full council meeting last Thursday there is no more money.

She said: ‘The HSCP faces a tough combination of challenges. To meet them, the HSCP needs more than the support of the council and NHS. It also needs the support of the Scottish Government.’

Councillor Morton is therefore writing to Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport Shona Robison MSP to outline its ‘unique position’ and ‘to highlight that budget pressures are preventing the timescales needed for community-driven transformation and to ask the Scottish Government to consider reassessing the funding levels provided for health and social care in Argyll and Bute’.

The ‘significant’ and ‘unique’ challenges facing the Argyll and Bute HSCP included ‘a shrinking and aging population which increases demand while creating difficulties in the recruitment and retention of staff’, ‘delivery across a huge geographic area, including 23 inhabited islands’ and ‘a substantial proportion of their budget that is outwith their direct control, such as GP contracts and recharges from other health boards’.

Their fourth challenge is ‘maintaining core local hospital, acute and GP outof-hours services delivered in multiple rural hospitals with unique recruitment challenges and cost burdens’.

Councillors Jim Anderson, Alastair Redman and Iain Paterson resigned their seats on the Integration Joint Board and were replaced by Argyll and Bute Council leader Aileen Morton (Lib Dem), deputy leader Gary Mulvaney (Con) and opposition leader Sandy Taylor (SNP).