Health Social Care and Housing Committee 16 August 2011

The committee meets on Tuesday morning at 10 in the City Chambers. This is the Agenda:-
Agenda_16.08.11//

Many items of note here but we would draw your attention to these in particular:-

Item 8 is Day Care for Older People : Contract Extension. This is essentially a procedural move to rubber-stamp the Finance committee decision to extend the day service contracts from 30 September 2011 to 31 March 2013. This will allow the new report about commissioning for adult care and support to be brought before the Health and Social Care committee in October this year, and for consultation on that draft plan until February 2012. Part of this recognises that there will need to be more provision for care in the home in the future. One item which has already been investigated is the continuation of lunch clubs across the city. It is recognised that these reduce social isolation and play an important role in the care of the older sector of the population. There is within the report a list of all the organisations affected, as well as how much their individual contracts are worth.

Item 18 deals with the plan for advice and support and accommodation to prevent homelessness, and covers the period from 2011 to 2016. The report says that the consultation found that the majority of respondents agreed with the terms of the draft commissioning plan, but that where there was disagreement there were some useful comments on the risks of implementation.This report states that in the financial year 2011-12 the council will lose from its budget around £1.2m of housing benefit which will necessitate change in itself.  But the report also sounds the bell of third party involvement in one sentence:- “It will also examine the various procurement options including areas such as public social partnerships which have not previously been part of the commissioning process for these services.” Does this mean outsourcing of council work? There are certain groups within Edinburgh who think that the council is planning to do this, and that this will lead to less accountability among our elected representatives. There is detailed analysis of the survey carried out on the draft plan, including one interesting answer which is that where possible flat sharing should be avoided. It seems to be universally recognised that it is difficult to share even without some of the problems that the homeless people being cared for by the council have. It is envisaged that a final plan will be presented to the Policy and Strategy Committee on 6 September.

One other report deals with The Risk Factory. This is stated to be as follows:-

TRF is an interactive safety centre built to deliver a number of different safety messages to young people from throughout the Lothians with the main focus being on Primary 7 (P7) pupils. The first custom built centre of its kind in Scotland, TRF was established to provide high quality, interactive community safety education, which would help to prevent accidents and develop active citizenship around crime prevention and enforcement. The programme provides experiential learning using realistic scenarios.

The council bears 60% of the funding of the centre and its running costs amounting to £66,955. Half of the expenditure is related to salaries, although most of the staff are volunteers. The number of paid posts has been reduced from three to two. But the overarching comment on this matter is that The Risk Factory is a success, as it has increased its programmes to other groups apart from the primary 7 children it was initially intended for. As well as that the amount of council funding has reduced since the centre was first started.