A resident in need of care at home has been left waiting at least 449 days by South Gloucestershire Council for support to be put in place after an assessment, it has been revealed. And the average waiting time is more than two months, a council meeting heard.
The authority says the delays are longer than it would like and have been caused by recruitment problems for providers, although it insists people are not generally left without support because they are likely to be receiving another service already. In a written question, Lib Dem opposition Cllr Ben Nutland asked for the average waiting time for support to be allocated to adults who have had their needs assessed, and also the longest wait.
Conservative cabinet member for adults and housing Cllr Ben Stokes replied: “Our longest wait that has not yet been met is 449 days. This is for specialist support for a small number of hours one day a week.”
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He said the latest figures before the full council meeting on Wednesday, May 18, showed 116 people were waiting for home care. Cllr Stokes wrote: “The mean wait for support to start for people requiring home care (including reablement) over the last 12 months was 65 days.
“This is a higher figure than we would have liked and is due to recruitment issues faced by providers, leading to lack of supply. It is important to understand that people aren’t generally without services during this wait and it is more likely they have one kind of service, and either we or they want them to receive another.
“Some kinds of support are harder to source, including very specialist support, very small amounts of support, or support on only certain days. The recruitment issues affecting support services are recognised nationally and are a particular issue in our rural areas.
“Officers work closely with providers to try and support with provision and make use of provision. People are not left without any support to meet identified needs, and these times are to provide the agreed plan.”
Asking follow-up questions at the meeting on behalf of Yate North ward Cllr Nutland who could not attend, Lib Dem group leader Cllr Claire Young told Cllr Stokes: “You stated that this was a national problem. Do you think this shows the Government’s strategy to fix social care was an empty promise and has ultimately failed?”
Cllr Stokes replied: “No I don’t think the promises are empty. When we look at the amount of activity that’s going on to try to move into that space of improving figures with the additional funding the Government has released through things like the social care levy, there is a lot of activity which is going about turning the juggernaut around.
“But it is slow work and it does take a lot of time, particularly when there are other pressures which we weren’t expecting at the beginning of the year, such as the inflationary pressures and the Ukraine story.” Cllr Young asked: “Even though the support is only for ‘a small number of hours one day a week’ do you think it’s acceptable that a local resident still hasn’t had their needs met after 449 days?”
The cabinet member said: “I don’t want to go into the details too specifically around this one case but let us use it as an indicator for the other cases which are also taking longer than we would like to fulfil. It’s not that people are not getting care but for partial packages of, let’s say, a piece of care for an hour a week which is very specific, it might well be that we have measured that care, met it in other ways and we have got the very specific allocation.
“So I would say in these long-term cases, you’ve got to look at the individual cases and it’s a measured response. It’s not what we would like but some of these are very specific and so we make compromises until we are able to meet something. So, not desirable but I think it’s a pragmatic situation.”
