Care
Our statutory social care responsibilities for children and adults, including the 700 children and young people in our care, now account for £180m of our £280m total service budget (64%). In 2010/11, this figure stood at £128.5m, 36%, of our total £358m service budget. The amount and proportion we spend on social care across our services has significantly increased as our budgets have significantly decreased.
Despite this, social care is massively underfunded. In 2017, it was estimated that the Tories had removed £4.6bn from social care funding. Estimates vary but it is thought by the Local Government Association that social care is due to be underfunded by at least £2bn in 2019/2020 – a funding gap that is considered a conservative estimate as it ignores other key pressures such as unmet need, plus the need for improved training, pay and conditions for the social care workforce.
Allied to that, in Leicester alone we face a £5m a year budget pressure just to keep up with demand to meet our statutory duties. It is clear that social care is under acute pressure and those suffering for this neglect are some of society’s most vulnerable people. And yet the Tories continue to give us inadequate funding, or even a clear funding settlement for social care, let alone a workable strategy. Along with housing, the failure of this government to meet its responsibilities for social care is damaging, dangerous and grossly negligent.
Labour in Leicester will continue to do all we can to drive up standards of care and make the best use of the budgets we have. Social care, in Leicester and across the UK, urgently needs a Labour government, which has promised significant and additional investment.
Health
The NHS is, of course, responsible for getting us better if we are ill, but councils now have responsibilities for keeping us healthy. Labour in Leicester has taken full advantage of its new public health responsibilities. For example, our leisure services are now overseen by our public health experts, meaning that we measure their effectiveness and impact against wider health benefits rather than bottom-line income generation. A similar approach has been taken in our long-term plan for tackling homelessness, recognising that support for rough sleepers is as much about improving their health and wellbeing as it is providing a tenancy.
Our lifestyle hub helps promote more exercise and healthier eating – key in Leicester, where we have a higher than average rate of type two diabetes; but also vital to prevent long-term heart conditions. Our public health agenda incorporates our policies around care and social isolation, transport and the environment. It is an example of how Labour in Leicester approaches key challenges in a holistic, integrated manner.
WHAT WE’VE ACHIEVED
In 2015, Labour in Leicester promised:
- To invest in more extra care (supported living) and intermediate care facilities
- To ensure that all care companies contracted by the city council pay staff for their travel time between care visits and that zero hour contracts are not misused
- To assess viability for contractors paying the living wage to their staff
- To strengthen our arrangements to keep children from potential harm
- To improve facilities at our parks such as public toilets, play equipment and outdoor gyms
- To make automated external defibrillators available at all city parks and open spaces.
We have:
Our care services
- Extra care: Between 2015 and 2018, we have delivered a range of new extra care and supported living schemes for older people and disabled people, across 16 sites, totalling 137 units of accommodation, with agreed and funded plans to deliver a further 150 units of accommodation between 2018 and 2020
- Launched a new dementia support and advice service in 2017, providing information, advice, peer support, social and community services for people with dementia, their carers and families
- Ensured all domiciliary care contracts since October 2017 require providers to pay travel time to their staff between visits
- Every year, we have doubled the money the government gives us for housing adaptations
- Invested an additional £5.7m in improving support for children, young people and families to prevent them entering care.
Our care workers and carers
- Begun to pay the living wage to the city’s care workers – seven out of 17 care contracts awarded since 2017 now pay the living wage and now pay for travel time between visits.
Looking after our children in care
- Implemented a new approach to working with children and families which has, according to Ofsted, “improved the quality of social work practice” and is having “a positive impact on outcomes for children and families”
- Provided better support for looked-after children in education – school attendance is up and Key Stage 4 (GCSE level) results are better than the national average
- Ensured care leavers are given rent reductions and council tax exemptions
- Provided employment for young disabled people leaving care
- Invested in our council-run children’s homes, all of which are good or outstanding.
Public health
- Reduced smoking: 13,000+ people have quit since 2011
- Established a lifestyle hub to support people with diet, exercise, physical activity levels and alcohol misuse, with 74% of eligible people taking up the offer of support
- Opened a new sexual health clinic
- Increased breastfeeding rates
- Improved oral health levels in the city by 15%
- Established the Time to Change mental health programme
- Supported almost half of city school pupils to swim regularly
- Upgraded Cossington pool and Humberstone Heights golf course
- Relaunched leisure centre membership, securing 1,000 more members.
WHAT WE’LL DO
Labour in Leicester will:
Care
- Sign up to Unison’s Ethical Care Charter which ends 15-minute care visits
- Tackle care home staff ratios
- Review the contracting out of social care services which will assess the viability and impact of charges, bringing social care in-house and/or establishing a new
council owned care co-operative - Make Leicester a part of the World Health Organisation Network of
Age Friendly Cities - Develop a ‘community connectors’ model to tackle isolation through active citizenship and community groups
- Provide more support for carers
- Ensure all young people leaving care who are employed by Leicester City Council receive the living wage and push other organisations and businesses to do the same
- Aim to ensure that 70% of looked-after children leaving care are in education, employment or training
- Protect council tax exemption and rent support for children leaving care.
Public Health
- Protect our leisure services and keep them publicly-owned
- Building on the Cities Changing Diabetes pledge, each of our professional sports clubs and the council – Team Leicester – will establish a partnership promoting healthy lifestyles
- Map all heart defibs in the city online and
support CPR training in employment areas to make a Leicester a heart safe city - Improve the public realm with our ageing population in mind
- Publish an alcohol strategy and look to set up a Community Alcohol Partnership
- Support all schools to take up the Roots to Resilience programme to help young people develop mental health wellbeing and resilience
- Promote the Daily Mile in schools and map one-mile-long community running and walking routes
- Help get 20,000 people more active by expanding our Learn to Swim programme and bolstering our public leisure offer by investing at least £2m in our leisure centres
- Provide free sanitary products in city council public buildings.
A Labour government would:
- Provide £8bn more of social care funding and set up a National Care Service
- Increase the Carer’s Allowance for unpaid full-time carers to align the benefit with rates of Jobseeker’s Allowance.