CM Special Report

Financial pressures on local authority budgets and an alarming shortage of suitable social housing stock are increasingly jeopardising the provision of support for adults with learning disabilities, according to research published last month by Laing & Buisson.

Paul Kaiser has over 25 years’ experience in corporate finance transactions and has specialised in advising on a whole host of M&As, disposals and private equity sponsored transactions with the health and social care sectors.

As CCMN went to press last month the Law Commission released its vision of a unified social care statute (CCMN May 2011). Almost three years in the making the document proposes first level’ statue to set in stone the core duties and powers of local social service providing authorities, while a second level’ duty would see the Secretary of State for Health and corresponding Welsh Assembly Minister oversee regulation providing further detail. A further third level’ would see the two government’s producing a Code of Practice which would provide local authorities with guidance on how to operate under the new social care responsibilities.

The disturbing report of what the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found in its hospital inspections underlines the extent to which the current model for delivery of healthcare is under strain. The NHS is being squeezed by the need to find £15-£20bn of efficiency savings in healthcare budgets by 2015, but at the same time the country’s aging population and advances in medical science mean that the need for high dependency care will continue to increase. Something urgently has to change.

The last few weeks have not been good ones for the private sector in public relations terms (though not-for-profits have come out unscathed). The financial plight of Southern Cross hit the headlines and there was anguished debate on BBC Question Time on whether we can trust the private sector with healthcare’. Things were not helped by the Panorama exposé of abuse at the Winterborne hospital.

Anne Harris, Director of Care Services at children’s charity Rainbow Trust, explores the challenges of end of life care’ at home for children and shares her thoughts on why she believes it is the best option for families, as well as a cost-effective alternative to hospital-based care.

In April, CCMN explored the current state of affairs regarding care providers taking local authorities to judicial review over what they consider to be unfair fees. This month, we look at how a number of care providers are now considering initiating judicial reviews against PCTs which refuse to pay a fair price for continuing care.

The care watchdog is set on outsourcing its latest attempt at an excellence rating system for social care providers, with the window for tender interest now open to all interested parties and the names of those successful organisation said to be announced this August (see this issue, News).

Having recognised the principle of Putting People First, government focus has turned towards a wide agreement of transforming adult social care. By April of this year councils were required to have made significant progress in the implementation of the personalisation agenda. Faced with this increased pressure, it is feared that council’s may be tempted to focus solely on numbers to determine how successful progress has been, instead of investigating whether or not there have been real improvements to people’s lives through choice and control.

When healthcare plays the property market