By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter
Almost 500 people are still waiting for a review of the support they are getting from adult social care services in Nottingham.
Nottingham City Council says 460 people are on the list for checks on the social care they have, or waiting to receive, under a care plan.
Another 692 people are also waiting for an occupational therapy assessment.
The Labour-run authority says this is because “backlogs are increasing” due to demand for the services, and it does not have enough social workers to conduct the reviews and assessments.
To help tackle the problem the council will be spending £429,000 on agency staff to help work through the backlogs.
“Due to historical recruitment and retention issues across adult social care, there is insufficient capacity to carry out this backlog of reviews,” council delegated decision documents say.
“As well as the cost of delays, there are missed opportunities to pro-actively review people using a strengths-based approach, which would potentially result in the right packages to meet needs, and associated savings.”
The council spends a significant amount of its budget, around 60 per cent, on adult social care and children’s services.
Costs associated with the services have been increasing, largely due to soaring demand.
Staffing problems, including an inability to hire and retain social workers, also means the authority is having to rely on costly agency and consultancy firms to fill the gaps temporarily.
To help bring costs down a number of transformation programmes are taking place, including in adult social care.
The Government-appointed improvement board, established upon the collapse of Robin Hood Energy, is monitoring the progress of these programmes.
Under the programmes the council hopes to achieve a total of 2,478 reviews in 2023/24 at a cost of £1.191m, which will help deliver in-year savings of £1.293m.
The £429,000 for additional staffing forms a part of the total £1.191m cost.
If the council’s progress is deemed insufficient by the improvement board, the Government may intervene further with stricter controls, which may include appointing commissioners to run the council.
In October the council revealed it is not expecting to deliver the £67m savings required in adult social care over the next five years.
It is forecast it will only achieve savings of £54.43m against the target, however the authority says it is looking to address the £12.62m shortfall going forward.
However, progress to tackle the backlog of assessments is being made.
By August this year, the council managed to review the care received by 2,398 residents, “a significant increase” from the 750 people on care plans in January.
The council has a legal duty to review and assess people’s care plans.
Documents add: “The Care Act 2014 imposes a duty on the council to keep under review care and support plans.
“In trying to meet this duty, the council has already engaged external provides to undertake such reviews.
“These providers were sourced via a framework and the intention is to use the same providers as they are now fully up to speed on the council’s systems and approach.
“To engage other providers would entail delays to get them up to speed, further delaying reviews thus impacting directly the beneficiaries of such reviews.”
