When the Chancellor recently announced he had signed up four government departments for 30% cuts as part of the next spending round, I was convinced local government would not be one of them. It was. So, what do we do now? Councils are on their knees, their eyes understandably more firmly fixed on dwindling budgets, not on how to deliver dynamic social care responses to people and families in their communities. These people need some kind of support to get on with their lives. And they need it now. The King’s Fund tells us that social care spending is at…

Here is the story of one council learning to do things very differently. We recognised that the traditional approach, involving a large call centre diverting people away or passing them through to social care teams, was simply ‘sucking people in’. It had to change. Moreover, most of the community teams had become part of the ‘assessment for services’ factory. This to some extent presumed the solution for people was some reablement-focused activity, mainly supporting people coming out of hospital and/or formal paid care services. Although this system worked efficiently and well, it was never going to meet the requirements of…

A number of councils realise they have become, as one director put it, “assessment for services factories”. Guards are placed on the door – in the shape of ‘one number’ contact functions (call centres). They are performance managed to keep people ‘out’ almost by any means, including throwing services at people, or people at services – and hoping they work. If people force their way in, they are processed – a bit like a sorting office. They are ‘triaged’, ‘handed off’, ‘referred’ and eventually end up on a waiting list or in an allocation meeting. In one council recently they…