Sixteen councils fined for delayed transfers of care in 2016/17: ADASS research

Some 16 councils were fined for delayed transfers of care in 2016/17, with individual fines as high as £280,540, research by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) has revealed.

According to ADASS, ten councils paid the fine. In 2017/18, eight councils have already been fined, with fines of up to £99,970. Six councils have paid the fine.

Only half (52%) of councils believed their agreed delayed transfer of care targets were realistic for both social care and the NHS.

The survey also found that:

• 67% of councils reported provider closures in the first five months of the financial year (April to August).
• 48% of councils reported homecare providers handing back contracts (April to August) – an increase from 37% who said the same over a six-month period in the main ADASS Budget Survey earlier this year.
• 94% of councils reported they had experienced quality challenges (April to August) – an increase on the 74% who said the same in the main ADASS Budget Survey.
• Councils say the hardest care service to obtain a place in is a nursing home (52%), followed by home care (46%) and a residential home (20%).
• Only 18% of councils were confident (14%) or very confident (4%) that their Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) would deliver its aims.

The research found that more than half of councils expected to overspend their adult social care budgets this year by up to nearly £21m each.

All local authorities also faced having to help pay a potential adult social care bill of nearly £270m to fund six years of backpay for sleep-in shifts, ADASS added.

Margaret Willcox, ADASS President, said: “Our latest survey findings should act as a fresh wake-up call to government that adult social care is coming perilously close to becoming unsustainable.

“The extra £2bn in funding, while welcome, is simply a short-term fix and cannot hide the fact that by the end of this financial year, £6bn has been cut from councils’ adult social care budgets since 2010 - with demand for our services growing all that time.”

She said: “This is simply unacceptable and needs to be addressed, not only in the Autumn Budget, but also in the promised consultation on the future of adult social care, because we cannot continue without sufficient and sustainable resources.

“Our latest survey makes this clear and paints a bleak picture. More than half of councils are already forecasting an overspend in adult social care budgets for this financial year and their top two concerns are both funding-related.”

Willcox called on the Government to fully fund historic back-pay for care workers who have done sleep-in shifts.

She added that councils continued to prioritise delayed transfers of care, but the idea of imposing further sanctions on already cash-strapped councils seemed “frankly bizarre”.