If you followed our Tweets from County Hall last night (embedded below for your convenience) you would have seen that Ian Anderson, Director for Community Wellbeing and Social Care, gave members of the Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee a brief overview of the Care Bill which is currently going through Parliament.
Implications and impact
The purpose of the briefing was to highlight some of the possible implications that the Care Bill will have on the Isle of Wight Council (IWC) in the future.
The Bill puts all the work the IWC have been doing, since around 2006 with Personal Budgets and previously Direct Payments, into a legal context. It also delivers the Government commitment on the ‘Caring For Our Future’ white paper, addresses the future funding of adult social care and looks to simply the the last 60 years legislation, bringing it all together.
Change in responsibility of prisoners
One item which stuck out was the news that by April 2015, the IWC will assume responsibility for the adult social care needs of prisoners and bail clients on the Isle of Wight.
He added that HMP Isle of Wight has the oldest population of older prisoners in England.
Blezzard: Will Home Office fund the care?
Cllr Blezzard asked whether funds would be coming from the Home Office to provide the adult social care.
Mr Anderson advised that the Home Office currently had no idea of the adult social care needs of the prison population, but went on the say the IWC were working with the prison and NHS England (who commission the health provision in the prison) to understand what the adult social care needs of prisoners would be.
Disability empowerment vs adult social care
He went on to say that factors that contribute to prisoners’ disabilities are being considered, such as the ability for prisoners to be able to shower without help from carers.
The cost of ensuring something like that is possible should be picked up by the Home Office, he said, rather than by the IWC through adult social care.
Tight timescales
He added that there was not much time to build the connectivity between disability empowerment needs and adult social care needs of prisoners.
At the moment, it is completely unknown how much of a financial impact on the Isle of Wight council these changes may have, but Mr Anderson warned scrutiny committee members that they would have a lot of reading and scrutinising to do in the coming two-three years.
