We were commissioned by Croydon Council to review their in-house social care provider services and give recommendations around insourcing, outsourcing and in house delivery as well as potentially decommissioning parts of the in-house service.

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The Challenge

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Croydon Council’s adult social care services needed to maximise savings through reviewing its ‘Provider Services’ as well as to ensure the best care outcomes were delivered, the review looked at seven providers services:-
 

• Extra Care Housing for older adults

• Active Lives Day Services for people with autism, learning disabilities and physical disabilities

• Day Provision for people with dementia

• Sensory Impairment service

• Careline and Telecare responders service; and

• Shared Lives accommodation.

• Croydon Equipment Service

Results

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The work identified opportunities for increased income generation as well many possibilities for savings and cost avoidance.  Some of these savings were identified within the seven provider services, however, the majority would come through better use of the provider services to create a more efficient ‘total system’.  Examples of this include a better approach to placements in Extra Care so that Extra Care become a strategic tool for step downs from residential care.  Before the work there were many examples of people with such intense care needs in extra care settings that the cost was actually more than residential care and there was no capacity to use the six Extra Care schemes for step downs and hospital leavers.

The work identified around £550,000 in increased net revenue and £1.8m in cost avoidance and savings across adult social care.

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​These savings and cost reductions came from a combination of:
 

·     Outsourcing services

·     Merging services and streamlining structure

·     Transferring work to dispersed models

·     Managing demand through more cost effective avenues of service provision

Recommendations

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Recommendations were made to maximise the impact on productivity and efficiency which included:
 

1. A strategic move to a whole system approach to placements.

2. Early engagement to ensure a person-centred, high quality demand management system is in place.

3. Developing culture, mindset, and processes in order to scale services and fill existing vacancies.

4. Actions were identified that would improve the experience and outcomes of people using services, including:

5. Improved person-centred assessments

6. Improved demand management.

7. Improved communication and service user engagement.
    

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