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Agenda item

Better Care Fund: Guidance and process for 2016/17 and wider integration programme (Tandra Forster/ Shairoz Claridge)

Purpose: to keep the Board up to date on the BCF and wider integration programme and to inform the Board of the process for 2016.

Minutes:

(Councillor(s) * declared a personal and prejudicial interest in Agenda item 4(*) by virtue of the fact that *. As his/her/their interest was personal and prejudicial he/she/they left the meeting and took no part in the debate or voting on the matter).

(Councillor(s) * declared a personal interest in Agenda item 4(*) by virtue of the fact that *. As his/her/their interest was personal and not prejudicial he/she/they was/were permitted to take part in the debate and vote on the matter).

The Board considered a report (Agenda Item 11) concerning the Better Care Fund arrangements for 2016/17.

Despite delays within the Department of Health in confirming the timeline and the technical guidance the Council and the CCGs were able to commence negotiation of the 2016/17 financial plan; details of the initial proposals were discussed at Operations Board on the 14th January.

Subsequent to this meeting, allocations for localities were published. These confirmed the CCG minimum contribution at £8.807m, an increase of £279k and an increase in the  capital grant to the Council (routed through the BCF) from £1.005m to £1,4m. The main element of the capital funding was for Disabled Facilities Grants.

In the local plan it had been agreed with the CCG that £4.367m would now be provided in the 2016/17 BCF to maintain provision of social care services. This reflected a real terms increase on last year’s amount, £4.021m, and fulfilled the guidance that ‘As a minimum, it should maintain in real terms the level of protection as provided through the mandated minimum element of local Better Care Fund agreements of 2015-16.’

The amount includes the £408k invested in the Joint Care Provider scheme. This was considered as our local flagship scheme; it had seen much closer working between the Council and BFHT resulting in less duplication and good performance levels despite unprecedented challenges for the acute Trusts. The £408k would allow the existing capacity of the reablement service to be maintained.

£500k had also been included to help to continue to deliver 7 Day Week Services. The council had made a number of changes to ensure a social work presence in hospitals at the weekend to ensure discharge was not now limited to weekdays. The intention was to build on this good work with other hospitals we work with and to extend our focus into the community to address non elective admissions.

The amount also included funding for West of Berkshire projects. These  include ‘Connected Care’, an ICT project that aimed to support more effective information sharing across health and social care, a key requirement of any integration programme and ‘Care Homes’ which focused on reducing the disproportionately high number of non elective admissions from care homes.

Investment related to the contract held with BFHT had also been agreed with the CCG, totalling £1,889,000.  This covered a range of services including intermediate care, speech and language therapy and the community geriatrician.

Whilst the financial plan had been agreed with the CCG the accompanying narrative was still in progress.  The Better Care Fund had introduced a new Key Lines of Enquiry document that would reduce the burden in this part of the process.

RESOLVED that the update on the arrangements for the Better Care Fund 2016/17 be noted.

 

Supporting documents: