Wakefield Council currently spends in the region of £220 million per year on delivering adult social care, both for people with assessed needs and to deliver our prevent, reduce, delay, duties within the Care Act 2014.
Currently our care market has mixed capacity, with over saturation in some areas, such as home care for over 65s and supported living learning disabilities, however, we have high demand but a lack of capacity for mental health and complex dementia.
Over the duration of this market position statement, we aim to strengthen our preventative offer through the VCSE, improve awareness for care and support services, both generally and to aid carers in access for support they can use. For care providers we look to build upon recent developments to engagement with them, aiming to develop co-production and market shaping activity with the market, rather than doing to the market.
We have aims to improve our awareness around hard to reach services, for people considered at ‘seldom heard voices’ through our networks for people with lived experience.
Our main priority as a commissioning team will be to ensure that our near future commissioning activity will achieve changes that prepare our market for the projected demand and the expectation of people’s needs becoming more complex when they do need care and support, as people will be living at home for longer, managing their conditions through preventative support, before their needs escalate to the point whereby they can no longer manage without more substantial care.