BASE is a supported employment service that specialises in assisting people with disabilities to access training, education, and paid employment. The service employs supported-employment officers who give one-to-one support, identify suitable job matches, work-taster experience, and ongoing support after a placement is made. The scheme exceeded all of its targets regarding numbers of people supported, numbers in paid employment, numbers in work-tasters, and numbers attending College. The scheme was recently highly commended in the Local Government Awards, 'Social Services Team of the Year'.

Financial planning issues relating to this scheme:

• The project was started with a funding package (in cash and in kind) of £1.4m for two years through the European Social Fund (ESF).
  
• A Joint Review of the council's Social Services was undertaken between November 2001 and January 2002, and at that time the funding for the project was to end in June 2002. There was great uncertainty about whether the project would be able to continue given the uncertainty about resourcing. A bid had been made for further ESF funding, administered by the Government Office for the South East, with the council indicating that it would provide the necessary 'matched funding', although the budget setting process for 2002/3 had not been concluded.
  
• There was no longer-term financial planning in place in the council, relying on an annual budget setting process supported by a process of identification of unavoidable commitments.
  
• There was no corporate strategic planning process in place with integrated financial and service planning which would have provided the framework to deal with the financial position faced by the BASE project.
  
• The Council produced an action plan in response to the Joint Review report which included the development of an integrated planning system driven by service plans and supported by three-year medium-term financial planning.

The funding of the BASE project was resolved in the short term as the application for ESF funding until the end of December 2003 was successful, although this was a high-risk strategy.

The longer term resourcing of the project has been resolved using the new medium-term planning process. The council has decided to fund the core of the supported employment service. In addition, an options appraisal has been prepared which explores a range of management options for the project to ensure its continued success and financial security in the longer term.

Local Authority 'X' has the following outcomes in its PAF national indicators:

• PAF B8 - Cost of services for looked after children - The average cost in Authority 'X' is high when good performance is generally low.
  
• PAF B10 - Unit cost of foster care - Unit cost in Authority 'X' is low, when good performance is neither too high or too low.
  
• PAF A1 - Stability of placements of children looked after - Performance in Authority 'X' is that high numbers of children have had three or more placements during the year when good performance is low.

This Authority may wish to reconsider the level of resources being made available to the family support service, whether residential placements are taking up too much of its resources for children at high cost (either because too many children are placed or placement costs are too high), and whether low numbers of available foster carers or carers leaving the service and correspondingly high levels of residential placements are contributing to its poor performance regarding the placement stability of looked after children.

Local Authority Y - Adult's Services

• Local Authority 'Y' has the following outcomes in its PAF national indicators:
  
• PAF B13 - Unit cost of residential and nursing care for older people - Unit cost in Authority 'Y' is low when good performance is neither high or low.
  
• PAF B17 - Unit cost of home care for adults and older people - Unit costs in authority 'Y' is high when good performance is neither too high or too low.
  
• PAF C26 - Admissions of supported residents aged 65 or over to residential/nursing care - Performance in Authority 'Y' is high when good performance is low.
  
• PAF C28 - Intensive home care - Authority 'Y' has low numbers of households receiving intensive home care per 1,000 population aged 65 or over when good performance is high.

This Authority may wish to review its commissioning arrangements for both residential and home care, including the balance between home care services provided in-house or in the independent sector (as in-house may traditionally be at higher cost), to determine whether existing arrangements are encouraging inappropriate placements in residential care rather than being supported at home with intensive packages. Changes in the pattern of service provision would need to be reflected in a redistribution of budgets from residential care to home care.

Using option appraisal to determine the future of the provision of residential care for older people provided by a Local Authority
A local authority is undertaking a Best Value review of its current residential care provision for older people.

It has identified the following problems to be addressed:

• High cost of its own provision compared with the price it pays in the independent sector
• Buildings which are in need of considerable capital investment due to a poor record of maintenance and changing user and regulatory
  expectations
• An over-provision of traditional longer-term residential care places with an under-provision of short term and respite care places, intermediate care and rehabilitation services and supported living schemes

The following objectives and outcomes have been identified:

• The need to secure a better balance of provision to meet needs
• Avoid the need for a capital outlay by the council
• Reduce overall costs of residential provision and invest resources into home-based services including housing with care schemes

Broad evaluations are undertaken against set criteria, which included Experience, Expertise, Potential, and Market Impact to create a realistic shortlist of options.

Options which have been judged to require more detailed appraisal through option appraisal techniques are:

• Transfer existing provision to an independent sector or not-for-profit provider with a specification for service development in return.
• Close the existing homes and use the resources to develop new services.
• Transfer existing homes to a housing association to develop Housing with Care schemes by adaptation of current buildings or replacement.
• A mix of the above options.

The Care Direct 'pilot project' was set up to incorporate all authorities in the South West. It is a comprehensive service for people aged over 60 and their carers to offer easier access to integrated information, advice and help. It was established in Devon in 2001, and receives 100-200 calls per day.

The responsibility for the Care Direct sites was transferred from the Department of Health to the Pension Service (TPS), a service delivery arm of the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) on 1 April 2003. Care Direct was subsumed within the development of the Third Age Service (TAS) which has the objective of providing a broadly based single gateway for older people, and a more integrated information and help service. The lessons learnt from operationalising Care Direct will inform the front-end and co-ordinating function for TAS in Devon. TAS aims to be a broadly based multi-agency partnership.

One of the first requirements of TAS has been for local authorities and the DWP to establish a joint Financial Assessment and Benefits Team, with 'Fairer Charging' guidance coming into effect on 1 April 2003 which requires a benefits check to be offered to service users whenever an authority makes an assessment of ability to pay. In Devon, this has been achieved through an agreement between Devon County council, DWP and Citizens Advice Bureaux (CAB) to work together.

This has resulted in the Devon Welfare Rights Unit (DWRU), CAB, and the DWP home visiting service forming a partnership with Devon County council to establish a joint Financial Assessments and Benefits Team (FAB), which is responsible for both the financial assessment and the benefits check. The FAB has been operational since April 2003.

The initial emphasis on financial matters is essential in simplifying things for the user and reducing the scale of unclaimed benefit through the provision of an integrated service. Over the course of the next 18 months, three key objectives for TAS are seen as priorities:

• Further develop the joint FAB teams so that they provide an integrated service for users and widen the focus to financial assessments, maximising benefits take-up, housing and Council Tax benefits, and debt reduction.
  
• Establish a single 'gateway' for access to information and help for older people and their carers.
  
• Fulfil the health and social care preventative agenda through the promotion of services, some of which are universal in nature, and which are aimed at promoting people's independence to enjoy a good quality of life, thereby delaying or reducing their dependence on more costly services.

Day services for people with a learning disability are the subject of modernisation to meet the expectations identified in the Government's strategy for people with a learning disability 'Valuing People'.

This means that there is ongoing change in the operational environment of providing day services away from 'centre-based' services, to services which make more use of community facilities and encourage more people into education and employment.

A budget setting process which is not well connected to service delivery will result in the continuation of budgets reflecting traditional centre activities and fail to reflect the new spending patterns.

Examples of this problem have been identified in Joint Reviews and are illustrated in the following budget areas:

• Transport budgets were not adjusted to reflect the fact that fewer service users need to be transported to the centres.
  
• Although expenditure levels on transport had fallen, this was not as great as the reduction in usage, thereby increasing unit costs, and yet no attempt was made to rationalise the transport arrangements.
  
• Other centre-based budgets such as consumable materials and provisions were not reduced.
  
• New budgets were not created to reflect expenditure on access to community.
  
• New budgets were not created to reflect the support costs to be borne by Social Services relating to educational activities or work placements.

In these examples, the problems of finance staff setting budgets on the basis of the previous year without discussion with service managers resulted in problems for the manager in budget management and problems of budget accountability.

Quotes from Joint Review reports include:

"Finance set my budget…I would shape it differently…would be more realistic."

Unit Manager

"Still have the allocated funds for non-staffing budgets that were handed over from (previous authority) four years ago…have struggled to get these aligned with reality."

Unit manager