CareCubed aids Fair Cost of Care Exercise

While adult social care reform hangs in the balance, with changes proposed in the People at the Heart of Care White Paper outlining the Government’s ten-year social care reform delayed by the Chancellor’s Autumn statement, the Fair Cost of Care (FCOC) exercise has still been successful in giving greater visibility of the shape and state of local care markets.

The Department for Health & Social Care (DHSC) FCOC exercise, which local authorities were mandated to complete by October 2022, required councils to survey a range of providers to improve their understanding of the costs of delivering over-65s care in their area.

To enable local authorities to meet the requirement, a free data collection tool commissioned by CHIP (delivered by the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services) was developed by iESE based on its tool CareCubed which is already used by more than 100 councils and care providers across the UK.

The iESE-designed tool was used by more than 95 per cent of councils and 60 per cent of all over-65s care providers, representing around 40 per cent of all beds nationally. “We had really good engagement with the tool,” said Sherif Attia, Head of Design at iESE, “Local authorities will now use the information to create a Market Sustainability Plan that they will submit to the DHSC in February.”

Craig White, Head of Business Development at iESE, said the exercise had encouraged interest in the full CareCubed package from local authorities not yet subscribed, with iESE carrying out around 100 demonstrations in response in recent months. In addition, iESE is seeing interest from some local authorities in using CareCubed for further Cost of Care exercises for other parts of the market. “The Government asked local authorities to gather information about the market for older persons, but many councils are realising they need to get a view of the whole market. Local authorities have highlighted to us that the cost of care is not just about the over65s, it is about the entire market, and they see CareCubed as the perfect solution to gather this information,” he explained.

Alongside a partner organisation, Peopletoo, iESE is working with several councils already on further exercises for the 18-64 care market, covering supported living services, residential, and day opportunities for adults with a wide range of support needs, including learning disabilities, autism and mental health. Whilst this is not part of the reform agenda, these forward-thinking councils have seen the benefit of working with local providers to gain a clearer understanding of the true cost of service delivery, the key market sustainability challenges faced by the sector and steps that can be taken towards mitigating these and future market shaping activities.

While the future of adult social care reform is currently unclear with elements of the planned reform, such as the cap on lifetime costs for private funders now delayed, CareCubed and iESE remain an ideal partner and ensure councils have the tools to quickly adapt and model various scenarios. One policy change highlighted in People at the Heart of Care White Paper was that from October 2023 more self-funders would be able to ask their local authority’s brokerage team to arrange their care placement. The status of this potential change was unknown at the time of writing, but iESE is actively looking at ways to help councils prepare for this potential eventuality. One possibility would be to make a simplified version of CareCubed available for self-funders. Councils interested in exploring this are encouraged to approach iESE. “This service for self-funders was part of the original paper,” White explained, “There is a lot of uncertainty and councils are in limbo with that currently, but having CareCubed in your armoury will help support local authorities with whatever might be thrown at them. We know there is a lot of uncertainty currently, but as a supplier we can respond quickly to whatever policy decisions are coming down the line,” he added.

• Find out more about Peopletoo here: https://peopletoo.co.uk

• Contact Craig at iESE to find out how CareCubed can help with cost of care work and reform or for an introduction to other councils that have done this: craig.white@iese.org.uk