Agenda item

A report from the Executive Director of Adult Services is attached.

Julie Gonda, Assistant Director, Commissioning and Procurement Adult Services, presented an overview of the transfer of funds from the NHS to the Local Authority. An accompanying report had been submitted to the Board providing an update on the transfer of funds, the principles for the use of this funding for 2013/14 and the proposed transfer of funds from the NHS from 2014/15

The Assistant Director, Commissioning reported that the transfer is to be made in line with the Department of Health gateway reference 18568.  In essence this funding should be used for social care activity that impacts on health care and that reduces on going demand throughout the whole of the system of care.

For Bury, the sum to be transferred for 2013/14 amounts to £2.923million, which is an increase from £2.218million in 2011/12 and £2.127million in 2012/13.  The conditions on the use of this funding have changed slightly – for the previous two years’ allocations, local agreement was reached between the Local Authority and NHS Bury, and the transfer was made under Section 256 of the 2006 NHS Act directly from the PCT.  For 2013/14, the local agreement is expected to be signed off by the Health & Well Being Board in addition to Bury’s CCG and the Local Authority and the S256 agreement will be between the Local Authority and NHS England.

 The Assistant Director, Commissioning and Procurement reported, that order to support the development of integrated health and social care services, the Department of Health have created an Integration Transformation Fund (ITF) from 2014/15 onwards.

The fund has been created to support a number of national priorities within the health and social care systems, namely:

Support some of the new responsibilities of Adult Social Care outlined within the Care Bill

Integration of Health and Social Care where appropriate;

Provision of ‘right care, right place, right time’;

Creation of a single pooled budget for health and social care in local areas, based on joint plans across the NHS and Local Authorities, again where appropriate;

Transformation of care and support;

Support demographic pressures in social care;

The ITF will be a pooled budget deployed locally on social care and health support.  The local plans should be developed jointly between health and social care and will have to be agreed at local Health & Wellbeing Boards.  It is expected that two year plans covering 2014/15 and 2015/16 will be drawn up by March 2014, setting out the planned use of the fund to transform care and support, including protection for social care services.

Questions were invited from those present at the meeting and the following points were raised:-

There was consensus from Board members that the money should be spent to address some of the wider determinants of health and that members would like future reports to contain more information in relation to actions to reduce un-necessary hospital admissions and health inequalities.

The Chief Officer, Citizens Advice Bureau reported that he would like to see greater third sector involvement in health prevention work, and further discussions at the Health and Wellbeing Board in relation to the impact of a 10% cut in funding from the Local Authority to partners in the voluntary sector.

The Chief Officer, CCG reported that the CCG is considerably underfunded compared to other CCG in the Northwest.  The CCG will continue to lobby for an increase in funding and would ask for support from the Health and Wellbeing Board in doing this.

The Assistant Director, Commissioning reported that the funding detailed would not be new money and the Council are still awaiting the final settlement figure from central government.  

Members discussed changes to the welfare system and the impact on partners and stakeholders, and in particular the potential impact on the health economy.

Delegated decision:

1. The Health and Wellbeing Board agree to the use of the NHS transfer allocation of £2.9m to social care for 2013/14.

2. The Health and Wellbeing Board note the new proposed transfer of funds to support integration from 2014/15 onwards.

3. Future financial reports presented to the Health and Wellbeing Board will include detailed information relating to the use of the transferred funds to reduce un-necessary hospital admissions and health inequalities, as well as, appropriately detailed financial information. 

4. A report providing information relating to the impact of the welfare reform on the health economy be presented to a future meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board.