Issue details

Proposed decision:

As Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health, I propose to:

a)    APPROVE the proposed fee uplifts as set out below

b)    DELEGATE authority to the Corporate Director Adult Social Care and Health in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health, to agree the fee uplift for Direct Payments and Personal Assistants; and

c)    DELEGATE authority to the Corporate Director Adult Social Care and Health to take the relevant actions, including but not limited to finalising the term of and entering into required contracts or other legal agreements, as necessary to implement the decision.

Reason for decision:

The exponential increase in fuel costs and the general cost of living increases means that for community providers the 3% fee uplift applied in April is not sufficient to meet the rising costs of delivery, leading to an increased number of unmet care packages as framework providers are unable to meet the costs of delivering these.Providers have highlighted that they are facing spending pressures from inflation and increased pay and national insurance costs in excess of the average 3% provision for locally negotiated fee uplifts that was affordable within the 2022-23 budget. The 3% fee uplift was set, taking into account the Kent pay scheme recommendations for 2022-23, the significant financial support given to providers over the last two years, and the available funding for 2022-23 raised through council tax and government grant settlement.

The most efficient way to offset these pressures is to provide an additional mid-year fee uplift to ensure community providers have sufficient capacity to continue to deliver key services.

Updates to client management systems will require a considerable amount of information to be made available in a timely manner to enable the systems to correctly reflect the decision made. The scope of the fee uplifts, in terms of eligible services and providers, rates to be applied and requirements for automated and manual inputting of data, will be required at key points in July to enable test runs of data in the systems.

All additional fee uplifts will be made as soon as all system changes and arrangements are in place, and this will be no later than 15 August. This enables a logical process for communication to providers as their invoices are clear and are based on full weeks. Further, this links in to benefit reassessments and other factors

Financial Implications:

The table below sets out the budget allocation that is estimated would be required to fund the proposed 4% fee uplift as recommended in this report. This does not include Direct Payments or Personal Assistants.

The proposed additional 4% fee uplift represents an affordable amount accounting for the cost pressures facing community services and will be funded from the Adult Social Care and Health (ASCH) prices and market sustainability budgets.

There will be crossover with Children, Young People and Education (CYPE) who also access these contracts for those young people aged 0-18 and 18-25. The impact of the additional price increase for children’s is a further £479k in a full year. CYPE will fund £269k from their remaining prices monies and ASCH will fund £210k from the market sustainability budget (all in a full year). However, CYPE Commissioning are involved and aware of this approach.