Over £300,000 council grant set to reduce adult social care wait times

A local authority has received a government grant worth more than £344,000 that will be used to cut the waiting times for adult social care assessments.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has given a total of £27m to all 152 upper-tier and unitary local authorities in England to help tackle the issue. As part of the move, Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) has received a grant of £344,932.

Under guidance, councils are required to carry out social care assessments before it recommends that help is implemented such as new equipment, practical help from a paid carer or moving into a care home. However, nationally, waiting lists for these assessments have grown in recent years due to pressures placed on the NHS and record-high empty vacancies within the social care sector.

Following this, the money means that each local authority will fund a dedicated member of staff to review how the local systems currently work. NCC is proposing that £64,000 is used to replace ‘hard-to-fill social worker vacancies’. This will include recruiting higher numbers of assistants or trainee roles.

In addition, the council is also proposing that £100,000 will be used for new online software and training and the remaining £180,000 will be used to bring in expertise to ‘review the current operating model’.

After receiving the grant, NCC documents stated: ‘This is a non-ringfenced grant contribution paid to local authorities towards implementing innovative projects developed in response to planned reforms.

‘There are no conditions on the grant and the guidance states that the grant can be used to fund work to date or to update and implement plans that may have been paused when charging reform was delayed.

‘This supports the reduction in waiting times for assessment which is identified as a key priority for the department to address.

‘Though delayed, the impact of Social Care Reform is expected to dramatically increase the demand for assessments and in response to this position, work is currently underway to implement an online self-assessment option for both a person’s financial and care assessment.’

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