Over £20 million of cuts will be made to social care in Glasgow as part of plans to plug a £40m budget gap.
Almost 200 jobs are set to be lost due to the savings, while a budget for care home beds is being slashed, charges increased and £17m taken from reserves to deal with the shortfall.
Sending a “distress flare” — by not agreeing a budget — was considered by members of Glasgow City Integration Joint Board [IJB], a partnership between the council and NHS which runs the health and social care partnership [HSCP].
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But it was passed by nine votes to six following warnings that not setting a balanced budget would bring “an immediate risk in terms of breaching statutory responsibilities” and halt new care packages.
The board did agree to write to the Scottish Government to express concerns over funding and the “severity” of cuts needed.
It will also ask city treasurer, Cllr Ricky Bell, SNP, to justify the council’s decision not to pass on Scottish Government funding for pay awards for social work staff, which officials reported could have prevented almost £8m of cuts.
Cllr Lana Reid-McConnell, Greens, put forward an amendment which wouldn’t have passed a budget, and would have required the board to meet again next week.
She said it was “completely unacceptable” that the IJB faced a £40m gap, as well as an estimated £45m hole next year, which will put services in “an even more precarious position”.
Trade unions have said members are “burnt out and broken”, Cllr Reid-McConnell added, and the risk of “failing to meet statutory duties” could lead to challenges from the European Commission for Human Rights.
Her amendment asked members to agree it was “not possible” to set a balanced budget that “meets the needs of the IJB and its service users” and called for more funding to be provided by the Scottish Government.
A budget for care home beds for older people, which help with hospital discharges, will be slashed by £2m and £3.8m will be saved by cutting 50 jobs across community health teams.
Reducing the number of purchased fostering placements by 10 is part of a package to save around £1.6m, which officials insist is part of work to reinvest in “prevention approaches”.
A service for children affected by parental addiction will be decommissioned to save £350,000.
Some of the most severe cuts have been agreed in principle, and will come back to the board in May after talks with service users.
These include a £2.3m reduction to self-directed support budgets for adults and older people, which would mean 73 people per year would need to wait up to 13 months for a support package.
It also covers a £900,000 cut to Care at Home and home care services, which would reduce the number of hours per week by 3,200, putting around 300 citizens on a waiting list.
Job cuts would start with not filling vacancies and redeploying workers, before voluntary redundancies and early retirements, officials reported.
Board member John Matthews said there were “great dangers” in passing the budget. “Don’t we want to send up a distress flare?
“A distress flare that says ‘listen, you’ve got to be aware of just how troubled we are as responsible people governing these matters’.”
However, Simon Carr, who chairs the IJB, said there is “a big difference between a distress flare and us breaching our statutory duty”.
And Francis Shennan added: “It’s quite possible for us to meet our statutory obligations and put up a strong message that we are doing this under protest, and with great concern for people we are responsible for.”
Chris Sermanni, from UNISON, said: “It just seems like we’re going to, with a heavy heart, bow our heads and have to accept it. How long is that going to go on?”
Cllr Matt Kerr, Labour, said members were being given a choice: “Do you want to breach a statutory duty to set a budget or do you want to breach a statutory duty in terms of duties of care?”
He said there had been “lots of letters over a very long period of time” and a “distress flare” needed to be sent “through practical action”.
His Labour colleague, Cllr Audrey Dempsey, added: “These are the most vulnerable in our society, I feel that to pass this knowing that these people that are already at the depths of despair and going to be pushed further is extremely alarming for me.”
Cllr Chris Cunningham, SNP, said he was “angry” about the financial situation and had sent “increasingly irate letters” to officials and government ministers in an effort to “find a resolution”.
However, he added: “The reality is that whatever damage may or may not be done as a result of passing this budget, not passing a budget will do even greater damage than passing it.
“There are no sofas that are going to present themselves over the course of the next seven days that we will be able to find money down the back of.”
He later added there was likely to be extra money now the Scottish Government’s budget process had concluded, but the council didn’t currently know how much it would get.
Susanne Millar, chief officer of Glasgow’s HSCP, said if additional money is made available then it can be used to reduce some of the planned cuts.
She added: “We are not necessarily delivering the public service that we would want to, but a reassurance that we will deliver the best public service we can with what we have.”
All three SNP councillors present at the board meeting voted to pass the budget, while Cllr Reid-McConnell, Greens, and three Labour councillors voted for the amendment.
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