Social work boss asks for councillors to trust her to beat £3.4m crisis

The Highlands’ social work chief has appealed to councillors to “trust” her department to overcome a £3.4million budget crisis without jeopardising its services for the region’s most vulnerable.

Harriet Dempster yesterday spelled out emergency measures that had already been implemented to reduce the projected year-end overspend, but warned further action was necessary.

Updating the social work committee in Inverness on a situation outlined last month, the director said she had introduced “robust vacancy management, robust management of overtime and use of relief staff and tighter control on travel” as initial measures. The department was also seeking to “maximise creative use” of telecare and to reduce staff hours by providing “a service which is just in time when people need it, rather than just in case”.

Much of the crisis is blamed on the department’s share of a compulsory, council-wide re-evaluation of staff contracts, costing £1.4million.

The use of relief staff and overtime, the closure of two independent care homes resulting in a need to “quickly” arrange care packages, and delayed discharges from hospitals and care homes were also cited.

Other steps taken to put things right are a review of non-staff travel costs, the capping of staff mileage budgets and a ban on “non essential” spending.

Conceding the department faced a “steep challenge”, Mrs Dempster said it was “unlikely” those measures alone would balance the books within the year, so other tactics were being discussed. She promised a further update soon.

The council’s opposition SNP group joined a chorus of committee approval for steps taken so far.

But Badenoch and Strathspey councillor Dave Fallows sought an assurance that vacancy monitoring would not affect any recruitment of front-line staff. Mrs Dempster insisted the aim was to “minimise the impact” on services.

“It will mean being more creative, working with our health colleagues to the absolute maximum and making the maximum use of the services that we’ve already commissioned,” she said.

“What I would ask you to do is to trust our managers to make the best decisions they can to meet the need and to try and balance the budget.”

After a debate, SNP leader John Finnie decided to withdraw a motion to guarantee that any end-of-year deficit be covered by the council’s emergency reserve fund.