Stockport Labour Group have called on the Liberal Democrats running Stockport Council to urgently review how changes to health and social care in the Borough are being delivered. The appeal comes in the wake of an announcement that £15.6million of cuts to the health and social care budget are being planned over the next 2 years, £7.8million in 2015-16 and a further £7.8million in 2016-2017. This would see the overall budget drop by almost 35%, at a time when demand for care is rising.
At the same time, Adult Care Services in Stockport will also be the subject of widespread reform plans, with the Better Care Fund pooling resources between Councils and the NHS from April 2015, the 2014 Care Act being implemented, and the review of healthcare in Greater Manchester, ‘Healthier Together’, starting to take shape.
A ‘locality hub’ in Marple and Werneth is piloting measures aimed at bringing together GP’s, community health practitioners and social care services, but full integration of services won’t be complete until September. This leaves all other areas of the Borough not yet having starting the integration process, but still expected to deliver massive savings from services to the Council budget.
Coun. Tom McGee, Stockport Labour Group’s Health Spokesperson, said ‘the Council says it is on track to meet the very challenging April 2015 deadline for a fully functioning integrated health and social care system whilst also aiming to take nearly £16 million over 2 years from the budget. As yet I can’t see how they are going to manage this over the next few months, if at all.
‘The principle of hospital services, GP’s primary care services and integrated health and social care all working together in tandem is one I whole-heartedly support, but the focus should be to provide the best end-to-end care for patients in our Borough, not simply on cutting costs.’
Stockport has fallen behind other Local Authorities in recent years, many of whom have made significant progress in improving health outcomes for patients by ensuring services work efficiently together. In Greater Manchester, Salford City Council have an ambitious Integrated Care Programme designed to give older people more control over their health and care. Torbay in Devon have operated a fully integrated system since 2005, with results including a reduced use of hospital beds, low rates of emergency hospital admissions for those aged over 65, and an increase in the use of home care services.
Coun. Wendy Wild, Labour’s Adult Care Services Spokesperson, said ‘we all want a high quality, responsive, easy-to-access and well integrated care system. The question is how to get there. The Liberal Democrat Executive in Stockport needs to be more proactive in delivering these crucial reforms and not just using them as another excuse to cut services for vulnerable people.
‘If there is one lesson to learn from the experiences of other Local Authorities around the Country, it’s that effective integrated services have the views of patients and practitioners at their forefront and aren’t solely driven by a need to save money.’