£2.32m extra funding for social care in Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire County Council is to receive a one-off payment of £2.32m from Government to help alleviate pressures on the NHS this winter, getting patients home quicker and freeing up hospital beds.
The council will continue to work with partners to help reduce pressures across the health and adult social care system and to make sure the people of Cambridgeshire get the best possible value from every pound spent.
This extra funding comes at a time when adult social care across the country and in Cambridgeshire face unprecedented pressures on their services not just during the winter but all through the year. The demand for services has risen due to increases in the number of people now living for longer with a sharp rise in complex needs later in life. Over the next five years Cambridgeshire will have an increase in this population of two per cent, higher than the national average.
To deal with this demand and budgetary pressures, Cambridgeshire County Council has been focused on innovating and transforming adult services to support people’s needs earlier closer to home to help keep them independent for longer. This transformation includes expanding the reablement services, uses of assistive technology and piloting the Buurtzorg Neighbourhood Cares model in St Ives and Soham.
The Council is a leading voice in the County Council Network’s push for a fairer funding formula from central government working alongside Cambridgeshire MPs. Cambridgeshire is the fastest growing county in the UK, but the third worst government funded county.
The extra funding is part of a £240 million funding programme announced by Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock earlier this month.
Councillor Anna Bailey, chairman of the adults committee, said: “We welcome this financial boost from the Department of Health which seeks to ease the significant pressures Cambridgeshire faces when it comes to adult social care. This one-off payment will help more people to be discharged from hospital in a timely way and appropriate manner. We are focused on increasing the capacity available in the community to discharge people from hospital who need support to return home – but this takes time to achieve. We work closely with our partners in the NHS, the voluntary and independent sector to achieve this all year round.
“We have been successfully transforming our adult social care services over the last two years, but we need Government to recognise there is a substantial funding shortfall in Cambridgeshire, which is the UK’s fastest growing county, and that our services are under unprecedented strain all year long.
“I believe this funding signals that Government is hearing our message that Cambridgeshire needs a fairer funding deal.”
