It is geared to helping people who are frail or who have high
level of care needs so as to stop them needing institutionalised
care – i.e. personal care such as washing, dressing, help with
getting up and going to bed as well as providing shopping,
laundry, pension collection and domestic cleaning where this forms
part of a personal care package.
The demand for home care services across the country is growing as
more and more physically and mentally frail older people live at
home. Bath & North East Somerset has had to increase spending on
the service to meet this demand - this years total annual spend is
£4.3 million and in the last two years the budget has increased by
nearly £700,000 and £500,000 respectively.
The Government expects the Council to provide home care services
to people who would otherwise have to be placed in
institutionalised care and expects that up to a third of this
should be ‘intensive’ care, i.e. 6 or more visits and more than 10
hours of care per individual per week concentrating on personal
care and assisting people to regain or maintain their
independence.
As a result of contact with 1440 home care users, carers, staff
and representative groups, changes are now planned in the range of
services that the Council offers, in line with government
requirements and local feedback.
The Council’s Home Care staff will be reorganised into four new
teams an – an intake team and three long term teams. The intake
team will concentrate on short term personal and rehabilitative
care support for up to six weeks, providing a more specialised
highly skilled service with high levels of support and supervision
for individuals. The long term teams will maintain people who
continue to need a high level of support for longer periods of
time. The overall number of hours of service care provided by the
teams will remain the same as at present, although more time will
be spent on the high level specialised care rather than lower
levels of care. The independent sector providers will also
continue to provide a substantial and significant proportion of
the overall provision of home care.
Councillor Francine Haeberling, Executive Member for Social
Services explained,
“The number of hours of service provided by all the Home Carers
will remain exactly the same, this new way of working will mean
that more of our staff will be trained to look after the very
frail people with high care needs who want to stay in their own
homes and do not want to go into a Care Home.
“This reorganisation of the service will cost Bath & North East
Somerset nearly £70,000, which I believe is money well spent. The
developing links between us and the health services will also help
prevent people being moved into care against their wishes and
ensure timely discharges.”
Editors notes
Councillor Francine Haeberling, Executive Member for Social
Services will be making this decision on or after Tuesday 20
April.
The changes will be introduced gradually over a period of about a
year. All 1,400 Home Care users needs will be reassessed.
Other options for reorganisation were considered – they are
outlined in the report.
Details of the consultation with service users, their carers,
representative groups for older persons and disabled people, staff
and their trade union groups and other key stakeholders are
detailed in the Appendix to the report.
For comment please contact:
Councillor Francine Haeberling, Deputy Leader and Executive Member
for Social Services. Tel: (01225) 872199 Mob 07980 998861
For more information contact:
Nick Harris, Bath & North East Somerset Head of Adult Care. Tel
(01225) 477974
Sue Luxford, Bath & North East Somerset Home care project manager.
Tel (01225) 477986
Julia Dean
Communications & Marketing
Bath & North East Somerset
Guildhall
Bath BA1 5AW
Tel: 01225 477827
Fax: 01225 477499
