£3million Blackburn With Darwen Social Care Contract Cancelled

A £3MILLION contract to care for elderly and disabled people has been cancelled after a sudden increase in missed home visits.

Blackburn with Darwen social services bosses have taken the service back in-house, just months after awarding the contract to the not-for-profit Anchor group.

They said the service had not been up to the agreed standard – but Anchor hit back, claiming the council had refused to pay for the agreed amount of care, leaving it with no choice but to withdraw from the deal.

The move is the latest blow to the council’s controversial plans to contract out most of its adult social care to the independent sector in a bid to cut costs.

In November it emerged just one bid had been made for the council’s care homes, which are being sold to raise cash.

Lib Dem councillor David Foster, executive member for social services, said: “We have not taken this decision lightly but it has not been possible for Anchor to achieve the high standards of care in this particular contract that they and the council expect. Therefore both Anchor and the council have agreed to end this contract.”

Coun Foster said there would be a “smooth” handover with no disruption, and care staff would still be employed by Anchor until a new provider was found.

The opposition Labour group’s adult social care spokesman Coun Dave Hollings said: “It’s only been going three months and clearly hasn’t worked.

“Obviously it makes it much more difficult and they’re not making the savings they should.”

Brian Todd, of the borough’s Older People’s Forum, said: “We’ve always been against the privatisation of domiciliary care.

“These are the most vulnerable people that are being cared for, and it could be dangerous if visits are missed”.

An Anchor Care spokesman said: “We would like to have continued caring for the people in Blackburn but because of the financial restrictions the council imposed on us, we have had to re-consider our position.

“The council could only pay for 700 hours of care per week even though they were contracted to pay for 1,600 hours. This severely restricted the services we could provide to the customers in Blackburn. It would have also been difficult for us to provide the additional staff training that would have been necessary.”