The costings relate to the as yet unpublicised quarter two budget monitoring position of the local authority, its health and wellbeing board was told.
Chief executive Robin Porter explained: “At a national level, local authority budgets are moving to a point where about 80 per cent is spent on social care.
“If you think of the 730 services we’re providing to our 231,000 residents, that 80 per cent leaves very little for the others, which are all important for those people.
“For local context, our unyet published quarter two financial position shows the overspend we’re facing currently for adult social care has gone from £2.6m at the end of quarter one to £6.7m at the end of quarter two
“Those are the types of figures which have the potential to be breaking the organisation,” he warned.
His remarks were delivered during a presentation reviewing residential care locally and seeking a way forward.
BLMK integrated care board (ICB) chief primary care officer Nicky Poulain said: “We need to have some levelling of costs.
“The health (finance) is £2.4bn and we know we spend plenty of funding in acute settings. During the last ten years, more (money) has gone into acutes, and less into community and primary.
“If we held that mature conversation, it would need people such as Robin holding the torch and showing the numbers, because otherwise, as you say, we’re going to collapse. What’s the point of one part of the system collapsing?
“It’s something we all need to lean into and see the urgency of this,” she added. “I was absolutely bowled, Robin, by the £6.7m in quarter two. My concern is, it’s not being dramatic, it’s catastrophic, isn’t it?”
She suggested taking the issue to the BLMK integrated care partnership (ICP) with a mandate from the board.
LBC’s director of adult social services Jill Britton said: “I’ve talked several times with BLMK ICB about having a joint procurement care placement offer looking for those individual places.
“That would really help as, across the country, residential and nursing care providers think of health as a soft touch to get higher amounts of money.
“If it was just Luton or Bedfordshire and they didn’t know, they wouldn’t push the prices up for the ICB. We would start to buy together on a similar platform.
“We need to look at our costs across the board. How much is the ICB paying for nursing care? If we could organise some kind of summit to consider these things, that’s where this board could help.”
Labour Lewsey councillor Hazel Simmons, who chairs the board, added: “The idea of a summit is a good one to get adult care up the agenda a little.
“I think because of the urgency of this we need to be involved in pushing this forward across BLMK and look at it in more detail.”
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