Our collective thanks are I think due to Rachel Carter and the investigative team at the magazine/website Community Care who have published a significant report under the headline “Social workers voice concerns over the influence of funding panels in adults’ services”
The sub-header continues “Research by Community Care suggests funding panels are used beyond their intended purpose set out by Care Act statutory guidance, and in some areas to override social workers’ professional recommendations”.
Our thanks are also due to the 431 survey respondents working within local authority social care and finance departments.
Please read the article. I will not attempt to precis it – it is not long and deserves to be read in full. It raises further concerns about how the Care Act is actually being implemented: “the findings suggest that in many areas funding panels are being operated beyond their intended purpose, as set out in the Care Act statutory guidance”. Here at Rescare, we often hear of cases ‘going to the panel’: it was interesting to learn that local authority funding panels under a range of different names, including scrutiny, quality assurance, weekly resource, care authorisation, and adult social care finance panels.
The article includes reactions to the survey findeings and begins with that of Jamie Burton, barrister and head of the community care and health team at Doughty Street Chambers “…many councils across the country are routinely using funding panels, which is not what the statutory guidance contemplates. The role of panels should be to provide an overview in complex practice areas and ensure consistency in the context of commissioning large, resource-intensive care packages. They are not supposed to micro-manage the care planning process – that should be for social workers to do, in collaboration with the person with care and support needs”
I suspect we will return to this issue…