Report finds too few quality checks for firms caring for elderly and disabled in Bristol
Bristol City Council spends over a quarter of a billion pounds a year on adult social care
Too few quality checks are taking place at the hundreds of firms providing care for elderly and disabled people in Bristol.
Bristol City Council spends over a quarter of a billion pounds a year on adult social care, however a recent investigation found a lack of checks on how this is spent.
Around 5,500 people are supported by the council’s adult social care department. The majority of this work is contracted out to around 500 care firms, the number of which has rapidly risen recently. But council auditors warned that these firms are not being properly monitored, which councillors described as “quite worrying”.
This year the council is planning to spend £268.7 million on adult social care. This makes up 20p in every pound the council spends on day-to-day services, far more than other services like collecting bins, fixing potholes or running libraries, which tend to be more visible to the public.
Recently the number of firms providing care on behalf of the council has risen from 150 to 500, but the quality team has not expanded to match that increase and has only nine staff members. These providers are also regulated by the Care Quality Commission, which regularly carries out inspections. An update was given to the audit committee on Tuesday, November 25.
Thom Wilson, director of adult social care commissioning, said: “The quality team that I lead is actually really good. CQC met them and their report was positive about the work they do around quality assurance. What this audit has shown me is that some of their practices are out of date.
“We’re obviously not going to be able to have the same quality regime as when we had 150 providers. There’s the same number of people, but many more providers. It’s a different market and a different scale of challenge.”
While a contract management team monitors “strategic providers”, firms which provide care for lots of people, there is less staff resources to carry out similar checks on firms which only care for a few people, and those that are far away from Bristol, such as in Birmingham for example.
Labour Councillor Tim Rippington, whose adult son is in a care home, said: “I’m really concerned about this. We can’t leave it all to the CQC. We have to know what is happening with all these private companies doing work on our behalf.
“I think we know very little about how a lot of them are performing. It’s a bit of a ticking time bomb if we don’t know what’s happening in all these small providers. We don’t know what quality they’re providing.”
Anybody concerned about poor quality care can submit a “service monitoring information form” to the council. This will prompt the quality team to carry out checks of the care firm. However Cllr Rippington said this was news to him, despite submitting a formal complaint about his son’s care home.