Council decision on charging for home care
Older people in Warwickshire can look forward to living independently for longer and having greater choice of services.
As part of its commitment to improving services, Warwickshire County Council is investing significantly in a range of new care initiatives for older people and other adults requiring services within the community.
These essential changes are improving the quality of life for adults who need care and support but the costs of services are likely to rise as a result. Although the Council is planning further efficiency savings which will help with the funding, it is not an option to pay for the developments wholly in this way. It is therefore considered necessary to increase the contributions made by the users of the services themselves.
The Council has worked hard to ensure that their charges are affordable and over the last few years they have remained amongst the lowest in the country. Although charges did go up during 2007, measures were brought in at the same time to ensure that more people on low incomes would receive their services for free
Whilst considering all these difficult issues, councillors are proposing to set charges at a rate no more than 1% above inflation for the next three years subject to consultation with all service users. This is likely to mean a rise in home care charges from £8.70 per hour to around £9.13 hour from July 2008 (exact inflation figures are not yet available), which means that Warwickshire will still be charging less for its home care services than most other councils.
Colin Hayfield, Portfolio holder for Adult and Community Services said,
“For many years Warwickshire residents have been charged at levels well below the national average and our officers have been urging us to raise charges to levels more in line with that average.
“Cabinet were well aware of the enormous pressure that Adult Social Services face here in Warwickshire to meet the growing demands of an aging population. We were also well aware of the substantial improvements to the quality of service being provided by our social care teams and the costs those improvements require.
“However, Cabinet decided that the impact on our service users was of greater importance and we went against officer advice and only increased charges by inflation (RPI) plus 1% for the next three years.”