Warwickshire County Council likely to remain reliant on government funding to provide social care

Warwickshire County Council is likely to remain reliant on government funding to deal with the rising cost of providing social care.

The matter was discussed by the county’s adult social care and health overview and scrutiny committee this week after financial outturn figures showed the authority had spent £6.9 million more than the £221.5 million it had budgeted for across these areas in 2022-23.

Extra money coming in through the year and use of funds put aside from previous years brought down the gap to £1.25 million.

Councillor Kate Rolfe (Lib Dem, Stratford South) queried what the projections looked like for the forthcoming year and what was being done to mitigate the overspend.

Pete Sidgwick, Warwickshire County Council’s assistant director for people, said: “Once we put in all the additional monies we received last year, the overspend came down significantly to 0.5 per cent.

“Social care finance is very complex, you get a lot of one-off money and through Covid we have had hospital discharge grants and monies from NHS England to support hospital discharges.

“I think that will be the same going forward, that we will continue to have one-off money. I would point to the net position which is the 0.5 per cent overspend.”

He offered no potential mitigations.

Council budgets are complex and made up of many moving parts. It is not unusual to see a list of variances throughout the year due to costly unforeseen issues or extra funding coming in.

A report to cabinet – the team of Conservative councillors in charge – earlier this month highlighted the biggest variances across the affected areas.

Budgets for older people shot up by nearly £2 million in the final three months of the financial year – January to March – which was “driven by rising costs in residential, nursing and domiciliary care, the increased use of spot purchases for residential packages and the increased cost and volume of direct payments”.

Services for the disabled up to the age of 24 experienced “ongoing difficulties (in) placing young people in suitable alternative accommodation” with an “insufficient supply of places nationally” cited for an overspend of £1.64 million.

Spend on those with disabilities aged 25 upwards went up by more than £1 million in the final three months of the financial year due to “rising demand for residential care, supported living, direct payments and specialist college placements”. Mental health services overspent by £1.5 million across the year for similar reasons.

A total of £3.6 million came from government through adult social care discharge (£2.1m) and fair cost of care (£1.5m) funding, while almost £1.5 million worth of spending on integrated care services was pushed back “due to procurement taking longer than originally anticipated and the recruitment challenges the service is experiencing”.