Bringing short term and respite care closer to home

Cheshire West and Chester Council has launched a consultation, which will look at proposals to change the way respite and short-term care is provided in Cheshire West.

Cheshire West and Chester Council is currently consulting with affected service users, carers and staff, which will focus on plans to transform the way short-term and respite care is provided in the borough. These services are currently provided at a series of fixed venues across Cheshire West. The council is looking at how it can move away from this model in favour of one that puts people at the heart of the process and gives them greater choice.

Charlotte Walton, Director of Adult Social Care and Health said: “We want to provide a range of flexible, bespoke services delivered closer to home within communities.

This means looking at how we currently provide these services and exploring a move away from traditional building based short term and respite care towards a wider range of services offering greater personal choice and control for service users.”

This consultation follows the wider budget consultation Unprecedented Times that was launched in October 2020. One of the proposals within the budget consultation document was the need to review building-based services within Adult Social Care.

Currently the council delivers some of its respite services from council owned residential care homes: Sutton Beeches, Leftwich Green (temporarily closed in Sept 2018) and Curzon House. Over the last few years and more so over the last 10 months these facilities have been consistently operating at well below 50 per cent occupancy.

This proposal could see the closure of these facilities to allow the investment needed in a wider range of services delivered close to people’s homes and within their local community offering greater choice and control to those needing respite or short-term care.

Councillor Val Armstrong, Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health said: “It is clear that we need to move with the times if we are to support people and provide them with access to the care they want, in the way they want and at the time they need it most.

“Releasing the funding tied up in currently underused facilities requiring major upgrades will enable us to provide a greater choice and flexibility of care for those needing it without any reduction in the level of services people can access.

That is why this consultation is a such an important step towards improving the care offer we can make to our communities.”

Options being explored within the consultation include:

• A direct payment for service users to buy their own support to be delivered in their own home.
• A choice of short term/respite care in a residential/care home of their choice.
• The option of having care delivered in someone else’s home, this is known as Shared Lives. 

The consultation will run until 15 February following which a report of the findings will be prepared and recommendations presented to cabinet.