Healthcare Features
- Details
- Written by: Sean Clement
- Category: Healthcare Features
- Hits: 1393
Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council is to merge its senior management with the local care trust in a move predicted to lead to "far more advanced" integration than exists so far in other parts of the country.
If approved by the local authority’s executive board and the Blackburn with Darwen Teaching Care Trust Plus board on 8 July, the merger will first see the creation of a single integrated management team.
The SIMT, which the council claimed would be the first of its kind in the country, will be led by one chief executive for both organisations.
According to the meeting documents prepared for the boards, the integration of back office services and the senior management structure would be “far more advanced than in other parts of the country”, although the two organisations will remain separate legal entities.
The new chief executive will be supported by a three-strong executive team comprising a deputy chief executive and two managing directors, one for local government services and one for Care Trust Plus.
The model would also signal a “root and branch” review of senior responsibilities.
The move, which is expected to deliver some £2m in savings, follows the merger earlier this year of health, well being and social care commissioning through the creation of the Care Trust Plus.
Cllr Michael Lee, leader of the council, said: “Our partnership with the NHS in Blackburn with Darwen has a long and successful history and while we have to recognise the current economic situation we all face, this about far more than just making savings. It is a chance to reshape service delivery in the interest of the local community and protect services.”
Sir Bill Taylor, chair of the Care Trust Plus Board, said: “When we transformed our former PCT into a Care Trust Plus we promised to make our health, well being and social care more citizen and patient-focused. We all want more money spending on actual services and less on administration.
“So, just as merging health, well being and social care made sense, the obvious next step is the integration of management. The collaboration will bring about real and immediate savings and patient benefits.”
- Details
- Written by: Sean Clement
- Category: Healthcare Features
- Hits: 1259
Local authorities need to develop policies not simply “on the Mental Capacity Act” but on all aspects of their activities as they relate to people who lack capacity, the Department of Health has insisted.
In a circular issued this week, the Department said this work was needed in relation to “housing, transport, complaints, consultations, partnership working, personalisation, carer breaks and so on”.
“It is now time to look at capacity issues more widely in relation to local authority activity,” the circular said.
The Department also stressed the importance in the present economic climate that any reduction or re-organisation of local authority services is fair and proportionate in relation to the needs of people who lack capacity.
It warned: “People who lack capacity are least able to complain and challenge; local authorities must therefore remain vigilant that the interests of this group of people are represented in changes and re-organisations. Local authorities should make their own arrangements for these interests to be clearly represented.”
The Department acknowledged that much progress has been made in implementing the MCA since it came into force in 2007, with local authorities achieving “a great deal” in terms of training staff, raising awareness, introducing best interests decisions, commissioning an Independent Mental Capacity Advocacy Service and launching new Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.
However, it added that this major culture change needed to continue.
The circular, which confirmed the funding available for 2010/11, said best practice “suggested that:
- The focus of future work should be on the inclusion of people who lack capacity
- How decisions are made is often as important as the decision itself, and serious attempts should be made to involve people in all decisions being made about them
- DH guidance on eligibility for services advises that people who lack capacity need more frequent reviews than others, and
- ADASS-SCIE guidance confirms that IMCAs are a specialist resource that may be commissioned outside of the MCA for advocacy or other work in relation to this client group (such as home closures, direct payments).”
- Details
- Written by: Sean Clement
- Category: Healthcare Features
- Hits: 637
Plans for a much greater role for co-operatives in the delivery of public services require much more development if they are to work, the Secretary-General of umbrella organisation Co-operatives UK has said.
Ed Mayo told the Financial Times: “Co-operatives are businesses. It is not a charity model. It is a way to do things better and more fairly and to be innovative. It is not necessarily cheaper.”
Commenting on the growth in interest in co-operatives, he added: “It has been a sector and a movement that has just talked to itself. Now people are looking at the loss of trust in traditional banks and plcs and realising there is an alternative.”
Mayo’s warning comes just days after the chair of the Charity Commission, Dame Suzi Leather, questioned the ability of the voluntary and charity sector to fill all the gaps left by cuts to public services.
The Queen’s Speech last month promised an expanded role for the third sector and co-operatives but this will require legislation. The project is being co-ordinated by Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude.
Efforts will include opening up public services markets to allow social enterprise, charities and co-operatives to bid to run public services and an initiative to identify and remove barriers to involvement. Public sector workers will be given a new right to form employee-owned co-operatives and bid to take over the services they deliver.
The first measures to implement this policy are expected to be in place by the autumn.
Meanwhile, Labour-controlled Lambeth Council unveiled plans to be come the UK’s first “co-operative council” by 2014. The authority is considering offering taxpayers a discount on their council tax if they get involved in running local services.
Co-operatives UK represents 4,280 co-ops in the UK.
- Details
- Written by: Sean Clement
- Category: Healthcare Features
- Hits: 670
Public Health Bill
Amongst a variety of measures to reform the National Health Service will be the creation of a new public health service, led by the Department of Health, which is intended to weight health funding towards the most disadvantaged areas through the payment of a health premium and make it a requirement of local NHS organisations to improve the health of their residents, in conjunction with local authorities, voluntary organisations and local business to deliver this. Budgets will held at local level and local NHS organisations will be paid according the outcomes they achieve.
Social care (non-legislative measures)
The government is to establish an independent commission to examine funding for long-term care, with the brief to ensure that there is a fair partnership between the state and the individual. The commission will report within a year. In the meantime, the government will “take steps” to ensure that all councils offer personal budgets to older and disabled people, to encourage more preventative support to be provided and to enable more join working between health and social services teams to allow more people to remain living at home.