By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter
Consultants costing £200,000 are being enlisted by Nottingham City Council to help tackle an ‘increasing’ social care backlog.
The Labour-run authority says there are currently around 550 people waiting for an assessment under the Care Act.
An assessment under the act is typically done to determine whether someone can get publicly-funded care to help them in their day-to-day lives.
There are also 650 people waiting for an occupational therapy assessment and there is no capacity to deliver occupational therapy reviews.
“These backlogs are increasing,” council delegated decision documents say.
“Due to recruitment and retention issues across adult social care, there is insufficient capacity to carry out this backlog of reviews.
“There is a financial cost to increased delays and reduced proactive work as crisis response usually will cost more, and the ability to reduce unnecessary support through proactive review and re-assessment is compromised.”
Adult and children’s social care accounts for around 60 per cent of Nottingham City Council’s entire budget, and local authorities such as Nottingham are having to make significant cuts to other, less vital services in a bid to meet statutory duties.
The spend will cover external support across the third and fourth quarters of 2022/23, as demand is expected to increase further.
It is being funded directly from the adult social care budget.
“The likelihood of demand increasing across at least some areas is high, based on health and care joint system pressures [including] hospital admissions, increased complexity of care needs, and usual seasonal demands plus likely increased demand as a result of Covid,” the council adds.
