BRADFORD Council spent more than £150 million on providing adult social care last year as spending on services across England reached a record high, new figures show.

In his autumn statement, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced a further £4.7 billion for adult social care up to 2024-25, aimed at aiding hospital discharge rates and freeing up beds, and providing local authorities with more money for services.

But with budgets stretched due to inflationary pressures, some say the system needs long-term funding to address severe workforce and capacity shortages.

NHS Digital figures show total expenditure on adult social care in Bradford was £233.2 million in the year to March.

Of this, £73.5 million was spent on council-run services, £159.4 million on external businesses offering adult social care and £251,748.08 on grants to local charities to provide support.

Bradford Council can offset the amount it spends on providing care through income and funding streams, such as investment from the NHS and joint arrangements with patients.

Last year, it received £66.7 million, meaning its gross spending on providing adult social care sat at £164.7 million – down from £183.8 million in 2020-21.

Patients also paid for services themselves – which amounted to £27.2 million in Bradford in 2021-22.

But despite the continued rise in investment, as well as added funding in the autumn statement, the Nuffield Trust said the money available to deal with the increasing demand on adult social care services falls short of the required standard given the inflationary pressures local councils and providers face.

Natasha Curry, deputy director at Nuffield Trust, said increasing demand due to an ageing population and a growing number of working-age disabled adults and people living with long-term conditions is also adding to the stresses on the industry.

Across England, almost two million new requests for care support were made last year – up from 1.9 million last year.

Of them, 35,980 were made in Bradford, an increase from 31,050 in 2020-21.

Ms Curry said: "The system needs long-term funding with a focus on addressing serious workforce shortages and limited capacity."

A Bradford Council spokesperson said: “Bradford and District is held up regionally as a good performer when it comes to hospital flow and not delaying people’s stay in hospital.

“When benchmarked, the council spends more on preventing people being admitted to hospital and enabling people to leave in a timely way than any of its neighbours. This is because the council still operates five residential care homes that are used for short-stays to help people get back on their feet when their health has deteriorated.

“The council also operates the Bradford Enablement Support Team which helps people in their own home on a short-term basis until they are safe and independent again.

“This is rated as ‘excellent’ by the Care Quality Commission. Bradford outperformed every other council in the north of England last year. We already have winter plans in place to cover the next five months, which will be the busiest for hospitals.

“The Government have provided various grants for adult social care over the past few years. But these tend to be for one year or for only six months – which makes it difficult to plan and recruit hundreds of extra care workers to spend that money at the right time. A grant for hospital discharges ended on March 31, 2022, leaving many councils including Bradford still buying additional care and support on April 1, 2022, without the funding. This caused Bradford Council to overspend its budget during this year – because the only other choice was to leave hundreds of people stranded in hospital.

“The Government announced in September that £500m would be made available to the NHS and councils nationally to help with hospital discharges this winter.

“The exact allocations of money and conditions of this grant were only received at the end of November – so all health and care systems are now meeting to decide how best to use these funds to support people.

“In every area of the country there is a shortage of care workers. In Bradford we know that our vacancies are around 12% - and these are filled by staff working overtime or through using agency staff.

“We need the Government to publish a workforce strategy for adult social care which provides the funding for councils to pay staff what they deserve.”

 

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