Getting older sometimes give you an insight into what the future holds as your elder peer group are where you will be in such a short space of time. I remember when I started work many of those who i worked with were fit strong men, they worked hard and enjoyed life to the full. Now many of them are in there 70s and 80s not so mobile and some in the need of help to stay within the community. As the age demographic in Cornwall changes so will the difficulty to meet the demands place on it by the increasing numbers of people needing adult social care. To show this look at the figures, in April 2010 there were 3238 service users then come forward to April 2013 and that figure has increased to 4766 not far off 50% increase. You will know that costs have not gone down in the same period which will also impact on the budget, yet the current coalition government have place further cuts into the system. My question is and will always be how do we continue to provide a service whilst the money to meet the increased demand is not there, a question that has no easy answer and places enormous pressure on those in charge of social care. So far social care services in Cornwall have managed by taking out management costs and removing or reducing costs to services on the edges but there is only so much you can do to meet the extra demand.
Talking to local people they want to keep public conveniences, bus routes, repair roads whilst cutting car parking charges but they say very little about social care. Perhaps much of this is about them not knowing what social care does and will only know when they need it or one of their family needs it. So how does the Council meet all the demands of the public to keep services and meet demand, well the truth is that they will not be able to do so. Unless council tax goes up to cover this or the government realises that the cuts they have introduced will hurt local people and reverse them, but i don't think either of those will be allowed. In 10 years of being a councillor i have never known a time like it, you can reorganise, reduce, cut and shed staff but there becomes a point that to go further will hurt people. I believe that we are at that tipping point when the balance of services in social care are such that demand will exceed the available resources. Please don't get me wrong the decisions to be made in the next couple of years will be more then difficult, some will be life changing for the people of Cornwall and the Council.
This financial year Adult Social Care needs to save £18.5m to keep pace with demand, next year it will be £13m and this from a total budget of £140m this on the back of three years of tough budgeting. Everyone who works in social care do so because they want to help and support the community, yet with savings to meet such as those above it is near impossible to do what is needed for clients they meet. I have at first hand seen how hard those involved have worked to improve the services provided in Cornwall yet are we helping them with such budget constraints ?
It is for all the people of Cornwall to make our voices heard to make sure that Cornwall gets a fair share of funding to meet the basic demands on services, so write to your MP and councillor to make your views known. My feelings are that those in London don't see Cornwall as a priority, our road, rail links are poor and our funding per head of population is less then the city. We get European funding because of the inequality we have with the average european living standards why does our own government not care about us.
Talking to local people they want to keep public conveniences, bus routes, repair roads whilst cutting car parking charges but they say very little about social care. Perhaps much of this is about them not knowing what social care does and will only know when they need it or one of their family needs it. So how does the Council meet all the demands of the public to keep services and meet demand, well the truth is that they will not be able to do so. Unless council tax goes up to cover this or the government realises that the cuts they have introduced will hurt local people and reverse them, but i don't think either of those will be allowed. In 10 years of being a councillor i have never known a time like it, you can reorganise, reduce, cut and shed staff but there becomes a point that to go further will hurt people. I believe that we are at that tipping point when the balance of services in social care are such that demand will exceed the available resources. Please don't get me wrong the decisions to be made in the next couple of years will be more then difficult, some will be life changing for the people of Cornwall and the Council.
This financial year Adult Social Care needs to save £18.5m to keep pace with demand, next year it will be £13m and this from a total budget of £140m this on the back of three years of tough budgeting. Everyone who works in social care do so because they want to help and support the community, yet with savings to meet such as those above it is near impossible to do what is needed for clients they meet. I have at first hand seen how hard those involved have worked to improve the services provided in Cornwall yet are we helping them with such budget constraints ?
It is for all the people of Cornwall to make our voices heard to make sure that Cornwall gets a fair share of funding to meet the basic demands on services, so write to your MP and councillor to make your views known. My feelings are that those in London don't see Cornwall as a priority, our road, rail links are poor and our funding per head of population is less then the city. We get European funding because of the inequality we have with the average european living standards why does our own government not care about us.
No comments:
Post a Comment