HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL

ADULT CARE AND HEALTH CABINET PANEL

THURSDAY 3 FEBRUARY 2011 AT 10.00AM

PROPOSED RESTRUCTURE OF THE MONEY ADVICE UNIT

Report of the Director Health and Community Services

[Author:Sue Darker, Assistant Director, Learning Disability & Mental HealthTel: 01992 588820]

Executive Member:Richard Smith (Adult Care and Health)

  1. Purpose of report

1.1To ask the Adult Care and Health Cabinet Panel to consider recommending to Cabinet:

changes to the Money Advice Unit which will achieve 25% reduction in the unit costs;

offering funding to the voluntary sector to undertake some activities on the County Council’s behalf.

  1. Summary

2.1The Money Advice Unit (MAU) is a non-statutory service which provides benefits and debt advice and advocacy. As with many other areas across the Council the MAU is required to make efficiencies, and it has been suggested that some of the work which it currently undertakes could be performed by voluntary sector organisations.

2.2The Money Advice Unit’s funding for 2011/12 therefore needs to reflect a reduced amount in terms of efficiency, due to the overall need for the County Council to achieve a balanced budget. In order to maintain the casework activity which the Money Advice Unit currentlyfulfils, we will also need to provide some complementary funding for the voluntary sector to carry out activities on the County Council’s behalf.

2.3The total running costs of the MAU are predominantly salaries and associated costs. The objective is to make an efficiency of £202,000 from the MAU base budget of £814,000;alongside this a further approximate £95,000 needs to be made available to offer to the voluntary sector to undertake some activities currently carried out by the MAU. The total needed therefore being £297,000.

2.4It should be noted that in addition to the proposals mentioned in this paper, from April 2011 the overall budget will already be reducing by £163,000: this being the salaries and on-costs of four workers on fixed-term contracts funded by the Social Care Reform Grant; the Primary Care Trusts and Surestart, which are not being renewed.

2.5This means reducing the current staffing as follows:-

  • 4.12 interviewer posts – saving £100k
  • 1.3 Welfare Benefits Advisors posts - saving £30k
  • 0.5 senior - saving £26k
  • 3 advisers - saving £120k

2.6In addition, the Money Management Project would be ended, in order to achieve the 25% reduction in Carers Grant.

2.7This would reduce the budget by £282,000 in salaries and on-costs, plus around another £15,000 in non-staffing costs (phones, mileage, postage etc).

  1. Likely Impact

3.1The impact of these proposals would be to close the existing home-visiting casework service, currently undertaken by interviewers, which is provided to older and disabled people. It may be possible to grant-aid, or contract with the voluntary sector, to provide an equivalent service for those cases which are not referred via the County Council’s Adult Care Services Information System (ACSIS): these are usually self-referrals or referrals from sheltered housing wardens, GP’s, relatives etc.

3.2The MAU would continue to handle those cases referred by County Council staff via ACSIS, but would offer only a telephone-based service. If a home visit was required on those cases, the voluntary sector would be requested to undertake it. The rationale for this approach is that the information available to the MAU adviser on ACSIS (which could not be shared with the voluntary sector provider) would enable a relatively simple phone-based application for disability benefits to be carried-out. This will be especially important if, as anticipated, there is a coming-together of benefit and social care assessments, as mooted in the government’s welfare reform plans. It would also enable the MAU to concentrate on cases which assisted the re-enablement approach.

3.3In the April-September 2010 period, the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) benefit take-up project whichthe County Council funds dealt with 305 cases. The annual grant whch the CAB receives is around £76,000. If the MAU ceased to deal with 50% of its existing caseload (i.e. the non-CountyCouncil referrals) this would mean an additional 750 cases being directed towards the voluntary sector.

3.4No one organisation has been approached about what level of funding they would require to take on this volume of work, but it would be reasonable to assume a similar pro-rata amount to that which they currently receive (£76,000 for approx 600 cases; £126 per case), so we would anticipate the need for the £95,000 estimated above.

3.5In addition to reducing the casework service to those who are referred via ACSIS, the MAU would also need to scale back on other areas of work, such as training, in order to cope with the loss of adviser and interviewers capacity.

4Consultation process and Equalities Impact Assessment

4.1The changes in the staffing structure needed in order to implement the above are subject to a period of consultation running for 30 days from 28 January to28 February 2011. An Equalities Impact Assessment and action plan to address any issues identified have been completed.

  1. Financial Implications

5.1The base budget of the Money Advice Unit is £814,000, of which a 25% saving is required.

5.2In order to maintain casework, we recommend that a further reduction of the base budget is made to offer to the voluntary sector to undertake some of the activities which the Money Advice Unit currently fulfils.

5.3£163,000 of fixed term funding from the Social Care reform grant will also be ceasing at the end of march 2011.

6. Recommendations

6.1The Panel is invited to recommend to Cabinet that:

(i)changes to the structure and service delivery of the Money Advice Unit as set out in the report be approved;

(ii)the County Council enters into arrangements with the voluntary sector to provide complementary casework support; the nature of these arrangements to be determined by the Director Health and Community Services, in consultation with the Executive Member for Adult Care and Health.

110203 Adult Care & Health Cabinet Panel

Item 5 – Proposed Restructure of the Money Advice Unit

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