The money
Annual budget
The County Council annual budget for carers support services is £510,000 per year; this includes the original base budget of £360,000 plus an additional ongoing allocation of £150,000 for changes in functions and potential increased demand as a result of the Care Act.
Transitional funding
A further transitional fund of £300,000 for 2017/18 has been awarded to support time limited investment to improve carers support.
Funding the plan
We allocate the transitional funding of £300,000 to deliver upon pillar one of the strategy, specifically:
- Develop a robust carers information and advice offer
- “Think Carer” awareness raising campaign
- “Think Carer” education/training programme.
It is proposed that we use allocate an annual budget of £500,000 to commission a single or collaboration of providers to:
- Act as a single point of entry for all carers and implementing a “triage” approach to carers assessments and provision of support. Where need is identified the commissioned provider will work with the carers to develop a support plan to ensure identified needs are met access to their local community and universal and targeted service
- Develop and deliver local services in response to local need, including but not limited to:
- Emotional support
- Peer support/carer networks
- Helpline
- Training; (to enable people to confidently care)
- Practical support
- Access to short breaks from caring alongside peer support groups and training
- Develop emergency and contingency plans; (and use of carers emergency cards)
- Increased use of assistive technology to support carers to take a break from caring responsibility
- Increase use of direct payments for carers
- Facilitate access to respite and replacement care.
We will keep back £10,000 of base budget annually to fund ongoing delivery of “Think Carer” training for front line professionals and replenishing “Think Carer” awareness raising promotional materials.
Further work will be undertaken to improve data collection in order to understand the costs and impacts when the carer goes into hospital; and quantify savings to acute services through provision of improved support to carers, such as respite services and night sits that prevent unnecessary hospital admissions. This will support us to develop a pooled budget with CCG partners to jointly develop a range of affordable replacement care services, delivered at home or in the community.