Neath Port Talbot council to spend around £99m delivering Adult Social Care this year
Neath Port Talbot councillors have endorsed new strategic plans to address issues in housing, adult social care, and children and young people’s social care.
Neath Port Talbot Council is facing a ‘perfect storm’ of funding pressures, growing demand, ongoing legacy impacts of Covid, inflation and the cost of living crisis.
Councillor Jo Hale, Cabinet Member for Adult Social Services and Health, said: “Increasing demand and tightening budgets will add pressures onto services. It’s therefore vital we make the best use of resources to meet people’s needs.
“This means focusing on delivering services differently to prevent delay and needs from escalating; as well as delivering and commissioning the services people need in the most cost-effective way.”
On January 25th, 2024 the council’s social services, Housing and Community Safety Cabinet Board endorsed the following new strategies containing plans to ‘do things differently’ using assistive technology, home adaptations and other innovations.
The Adult Social Care Strategy 2023-26, Living the Life I Want, aims to “help people help themselves” by supporting unpaid carers, promoting assistive technology, building relationships and using more prevention and early intervention as well as encouraging volunteering.
The council says that there are now more than 2,150 adults receiving one or more social care services, including nearly 900 in residential or nursing care, 700 receiving domiciliary care, 400 in receipt of direct payments, around 400 adults with a learning disability, more than 100 with a mental health condition, and 150 with a physical disability receiving some form of external care and support.
The council will spend around £99 million this year delivering Adult Social Care. The strategy also involves Glynneath’s Trem y Glyn Care Home coming back into council management with a new role in rehabilitation as well as residential care.
At the same meeting, the Cabinet Board approved the Children and Young People Social Care Strategic Plan 20-23-2026 ,Valuing our children’s future, to help create an environment that works for all children, young people and families in which the council will co-create, co-produce and commission services for children, young people and families, ensuring they get the right support at the right time.
Council Deputy Leader Cllr Alun Llewelyn, speaking of the new Housing and Homelessness Strategic Plan, said: “This will help address a housing crisis which is not only affecting this county borough and Wales but also the UK as a whole. We will also continue to make the case for social housing here to be properly funded by central government.”
The Cabinet Board approved a new Housing and Homelessness Strategic Plan 2024/27, A Place to Call Home, to increase access to appropriate, affordable housing and to support people with social care needs to live well in their communities.
The plan looks to support wider communities by increasing access to affordable housing. This includes working closely with social landlords to develop new affordable homes and the council obtaining its own portfolio of housing stock for the first time in more than a decade.
The UK Government has launched its new Disability Action Plan to make the UK the most accessible place in the world for disabled people to live, work and thrive, although campaigners, including the charity Sense, have criticised a lack of focus on cost of living, employment and social care support.
