Building resilient lives: reshaping housing related support

Overview

We currently spend around £1m each day on adult social services and are planning to increase the overall amount we spend on adult social services in 2017/18.   However, the demands on adult social care continue to change so even with the investment we are making in services we still have savings to find if we are to continue to meet people's care needs.

Those who do receive support from the Council often need complex care packages, delivered in their own homes, to support and maintain their quality of life.  We have to get the right balance between spending money on people’s existing care needs and spending money that helps people live well and independently in the community.

There are a range of factors in people’s lives that influence how independent they can be.  This includes their home environment, their mental and physical wellbeing and what other help they already have in their lives, from friends, families and the community.

The County Council is one of a number of organisations which funds services to support people in their own homes or other accommodation.  We currently spend over £10 million a year.  We now propose to make savings in the amount we spend on these services.  If our proposals went ahead we would still be spending over £4.5m a year.

We know that other partners – including district councils - also spend money on these types of services, so we will be working with our partners and others to decide together how we best use the resources we all invest to make the most impact.

Our part of this spend currently covers these types of services:

-        Floating support – this is short-term support that helps adults stay in their homes

-        Homeless services

-        Young People Services

-        Sheltered Housing support

Why your views matter

We are looking at all of our services to see how we can do the best we can for people with the limited money that we have to spend.  We are proposing to reduce the money we spend on housing related support services.  At the same time we are working with our district, community and health partners to develop proposals on how we could meet peoples needs if our budget was £4.5m a year.  We know that we can't solve society's problems on our own, so we want to find out how we can work with others to help make the biggest impact with the money that we have.

We widely consulted residents and stakeholders on proposals to review housing related support services last year as part of our Re-imagining Norfolk consultation.

Although Members decided at that time not to take those proposals forward, the level of savings we need to make now means that we are having to take another look at the future of some of these services.

When we consulted, our partners offered to work with us to come up with ideas for how best to support people's needs.  We are therefore engaging with people who use our services, key stakeholders, providers and partner organisations to help work out how best to support people who are not eligible for Norfolk County Council's statutory care services.

We are consulting through:

- One-to-one meetings with organisations that currently provide services, where requested

- Meetings / workshops with partners

- Workshops with organisations that provide services

- Locality provider forums

- Asking organisations that provide services to engage their service users and encourage them to share their views and feedback with Norfolk County Council

- Testing potential ideas for redesigned services with people who use services where possible

- This online consultation, which is also available as a paper copy.

We want to find out if there are any comments that people have to add to those made when we consulted on reducing the amount we spend on housing related support services last year.  In particular we are keen to hear if people have ideas about how we can manage some of the risks we identified when looking at reducing services.  

We also want to find out more about what people value about support services and hear what ideas people have about how we can work with others to support people in the community and make the money we do have go further.  

As people tell us what they think we will feed their views and suggestions into our redesign process.

We will feed back the findings from our consultation to our Adult Social Care committee as part of the evidence they will use to help them come to a decision about future services.

Find out more and have your say online by clicking on the feedback form below.

If you need a copy of this consultation document on paper or in a different format please email haveyoursay@norfolk.gov.uk

What happens next

We will take a report to our Adult Social Services Committee on 23 January 2017.  This will remind members what people told us about services in last year's consultation.  It will also feed back the comments about our proposals to reduce funding gathered as part of this Building resiliant lives consultation.  The report will include the ideas that we have developed with others to run these serviices differently and recommendations about how these serviices could work in the future.  Members will use this as part of the evidence they take into account when making a decision about what savings to make and the future shape of support services in Norfolk.