Shetland : Climbing social care costs explained

COUNCILLORS in Shetland only have themselves to blame for a huge increase in staff in its social care department having agreed to ramp up numbers over a seven year period.
Shetland Islands Council’s audit and standards committee quizzed its former social work director Christine Ferguson on Thursday on why costs had gone through the roof.

The were concerned that the number of full time equivalent staff (FTE) almost tripled from 303 in March 2003 to 871 in September 2010, accounting for much of the council’s well publicised overspending.

During the same period the cost of employing care staff shot up from £8.6 million to £24.1 million.

The department now employs around 779 staff, but is finding it hard to retain them with talk of cuts and competition from the burgeoning oil and gas industry.

Ferguson spent 90 minutes patiently explaining why the number of social care staff had risen so dramatically, including:

• 165 FTE were added to the SIC workforce when the Shetland Welfare Trust was incorporated, which also realised £500,000 in effeciency savings;
• the council embarked on an expensive programme of devising an unrivalled standard of care, a policy it could ill afford;
• opening Montfield support services in March 2010 created almost 32 FTE; and
• delegated authority granted in July 2009 allowed her to create and delete posts within approved budgets.

At the same time costs shot up due to single status, which gave many low paid social care workers a decent wage, while adding further pressure on council budgets.

Ferguson said that social care policies had radically changed over the last two to three years, with people being kept in their own home for as long as possible.

This, she said, did not only bring the social care budget back in line with what the council could afford, but also improved the “outcome” for clients.

“The high level of service can’t continue. The level of care has already changed to a degree and will change further,” she said.

The meeting also heard that the social work department was facing stiff competition from the booming oil and gas industry creating problems in retaining social care staff.

Social services committee chairman Cecil Smith said: “We are losing people daily, and that’s why clients are seeing different people on a daily basis.”

He added that councillors had made the decisions and council officials should not be blamed for implementing them.

“We have to sit down and remember that it was us as the council that agreed the policies and gave authority, so we as the council should take the responsibility,” he said.

Audit and standards committee chairman Allison Duncan added that he would also take his share of the “blame”, a term Ferguson described as “interesting”, pointing out that the council had tried to do its utmost to provide an unrivalled care service.

Shetland South member Billy Fox said he wanted to get to the bottom of what impact delegated authority has on council budgets and asked for further details to be tabled at the committee meeting.