New Hertfordshire health project aims to make £25m in savings
Herts County Council’s Connect and Prevent programme was discussed at a meeting of the adult care, health and wellbeing panel last week.
The programme aims to make savings of £24.8 million in health and social care by helping residents to stay independent.
Its five key areas are supporting unpaid carers, supporting individuals to stay within their communities, “enablement” services to help keep residents independent, improving care reviews to focus more on people’s independence and improving transition planning for young people to ensure more of them can live on their own as adults.
Jackie Albery, director of planning and resources, presented various tables of statistics to councillors. She said: “We’re also tracking alongside the total spend, the number of people we’re supporting and the average cost. So we’re making sure that we’re looking at what’s the average cost within our community budget, which we should see go down, and the number of people being supported going forward.
“It has to be said that in 2024/25, we’re seeing a huge increase in the number of people coming through our front door in terms of referrals and so that’s what that big spike is. But you can see we’re beginning to come down as we get to the latter part of the year.”
Councillor Fiona Guest asked her: “How are adults with physical disabilities and long-term conditions covered by this programme?”
Councillor Guest also enquired about the reasons for a big spike in expenditure in April 2024.
Ms Albery said: “In terms of physical, you’re right. Older people and learning disabilities are the focus of this first phase of Connect and Prevent and that’s about actually being able to make it manageable.”
Last month, it was revealed in the council’s integrated plan that the second phase of Connect & Prevent requires an additional investment of £4.15 million.
Ms Albery added: “Phase two, which is signalled in the integrated plan, one of the areas we want to look at is expanding the approach to people with physical disabilities… that’s sort of in the phase two of this programme.
“The big spike in April is to do with fee uplifts for care providers, so literally, we come along and then suddenly we uplift everybody’s package by the level we’ve put in for inflation. So that’s really what that spike shows.”