Council leaders and ministers are continuing to thrash out issues with better care plans as they are reviewed ahead of their implementation next year.
The Better Care Fund (BCF) was a key topic when local government minister Brandon Lewis met with the Local Government Association (LGA) this week as part of a series of regular review meetings.
A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government said the LGA and NHS England were ‘intensively reviewing better care plans at the moment’ before they are put to Government for approval.
Associate director of integrated care at the LGA, Andrew Webster, said the BCF needed to be for a longer time period and ‘bigger in terms of money and services’.
He said: ‘The BCF has proved a very good catalyst for getting people to work together. I think the Government is very committed to integration. It’s now about implementing that.
‘We need to get on with it. I’d like people to know by September that their plans are approved.’
Last month The Guardian claimed the Cabinet Office believed that the claims for the BCF did not stack up and wanted ‘a lot more work done on the policy’.
Mr Webster said the reported Cabinet Office intervention would have been ‘based on a very early look at just a few places’ and was therefore ‘unfortunate’.
He continued: ‘There’s going to be a range of plans. The people who are struggling should get support from NHS England and local government through sector-led improvement. No one will be left behind on this.
‘I don’t think there’s any doubt that there are some people in hospital trusts worried about what this means for them and their future but the BCF is absolutely critical to the success of health and social work.’
Members of trade union Unison’s local government service group executive said there was a ‘need to level local government and privatised care sector pay and conditions up to match those in the health service’.
A motion by the group executive tabled to Unison’s local government conference later this month said integration ‘cannot be done on the cheap and requires decent funding if it is to work properly’.
