County Council needs to learn lessons from its failures in Adult Social Care

Lib Dems on Leicestershire County Council recently obtained a copy of a Judicial Review that involved the County Council and EMCARE, the consortium that represents private care home providers in the County. The issue that has ended up in front of the high court turned out to be fairly simple - the County Council hadn't monitored nor knew the actual cost of providing a place for an elderly person in a care home in Leicestershire.

Now, I have of course simplified the issue somewhat, but the Judicial Review prompted me to ask the Lead Member for Adults and Communities David Sprason CC a question on this issue at the Council meeting on 7th December. Which was, to put it bluntly - Was the County Council's fee structure for adult social care flawed?

To me the judicial review proves two things; first, that at the County's current fee level, the homes are struggling to survive. Mr Sprason's strategy of assuming that the local care market is strong enough to cope with the recession looks a bit tattered. In terms of actual money, the County is paying a basic fee of just under £390 a week, which includes state pension. The average cost of providing just the accommodation and food for a care home in the East Midlands is £319, to that must be added staff costs and additional running costs. If you pay your own fees, care homes cost on average £500 a week in theUK (for comparison a week in a hotel at £50 a night comes to £350). EMCARE should never have had to resort to taking the Council to court. They did so because the County didn't know what it costs to accommodate an elderly person in a care home when they set the payment levels.

The second issue is that the County's strategy relies upon a Quality Assessment Framework that pays extra to homes that meet higher standards, a laudable aim. The problem is that the basic fee is so low in the first place it may prevent bad homes from investing to improve and equally prevent good homes from maintaining high standards.

With all of the revelations about abuse of elderly people and those with disabilities across the Country, a strongly performing council like Leicestershire needs its Lead Member to come up with a solution quickly to reassure members, residents and care home operators. As an opposition group we have been considering how to provide residential care in an age of austerity for some time and are working on proposals to tackle the issue.

Dr Sarah Hill CC Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Adult Social Care and Health