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Thursday 11 December 2014

Budget Savings in Brent Adult Social Care

Looking through the proposed Brent Budget savings in greater detail, I see a number of problems around deliverability that concern me.  It is easy enough to pass a piece of paper that says a saving will be made; actually making the saving in real life can be harder.

Looking at proposals not to pass on inflation costs, or containing demographic pressures within existing budgets, negotiating better rates from care providers all sound easy to say, but rather harder to do.  These are the big items in the Cabinet papers on Adult Social Care Savings.  The problem is that this has been tried before over many years.  How much is left to be squeezed?  My understanding is that many social care providers feel they are at breaking point.  It is also worth recalling that Brent Council has made commitments on the London Living Wage that may be undermined by further drives in this area.  It is also worth bearing in mind that many of the affected staff will be women, and the legalities of effectively specifically reducing the pay of female staff in particular are problematic to say the least.

The other striking thing about these proposals is how they may involve knock on costs.  Cuts to social care may well lead to people being in hospital for longer, and developing medical complications sooner.  It is part of the perversity of this process that that may not concern the Council since much of the cost may be borne by the NHS _ a "cost shunt" in other words.  However, it illustrates how the ConDem government's policies don't actually make savings that are sometimes claimed for them.

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