For commissioning authorities, the spiralling cost of health and social care placements across all age groups will be a significant concern, with some being pushed to the point of issuing Section 114 notices.

It is more important than ever for councils and ICBs to ensure that every pound is being spent wisely, to deliver the care and support residents needed, while properly supporting care providers and balancing the books.

We are seeing a trend in our customers using CareCubed, in which they are able to quickly look at complex placements on their own merits and then provide a more refined, realistic uplift

Typically authorities offer an ‘across the board' percentage increase to all care providers and packages of support, but as highlighted in the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services Spring Survey, complexity and number of hours included within care packages is growing – particularly amongs working age adults. Children and young people tend to have a similar level of complexity and for both cohorts this means a higher cost to deliver.

A few unplanned high complexity cases can quickly swallow up council budgets, so it is vital to ensure that care packages are ‘sized' correctly based on the needs of the resident and then benchmarked so that the council can be confident they are getting value for money from the public purse.

This poses the question – does it make sense to offer ‘across the board' annual inflationary increases to complex placements?

One council recently offered 5% across the board. But the reality is that some of these placements need more than 5% to remain sustainable, and others are already overfunded and are offered a bigger real terms uplift as a result.

However, we are seeing a trend in our customers using CareCubed, in which they are able to quickly look at complex placements on their own merits and then provide a more refined, realistic uplift.

This helps to tackle to growing divide between under and overfunded placements and uses benchmark data as an evidence base to make the right decision, and means that limited public money can be spent in the most cost effective way.

To find out if your authority is using CareCubed, or to setup an awareness session to review some of your high cost placements, please contact carecubed@iese.org.uk.

Craig White is Commercial Director of the Improvement & Efficiency Social Enterprise (iESE), which supports public sector transformation

This column is brought to you by iese, the public sector transformation partner