The Fife Health and Social Care Partnership’s Integration Joint Board (IJB) has today approved a financial recovery plan to help reduce a projected budget overspend of £21 million.

The Recovery Plan was ‘agreed in principle’ by the IJB at the board meeting on 27 September 2024. But senior leaders were asked for more detailed information before a final decision could be made by the IJB.

It was then further developed and updated, going through governance committees and Local Partnership Forum (LPF) ahead of coming back to the IJB board meeting today for approval (Friday 25 October 2024).

Fiona McKay, Interim Director of the Fife Health and Social Care Partnership, explained: “Difficult decisions have had to be made, but we are very clear despite the challenging financial position we face, those people at significant risk or who have a significant need in Fife will still get the help they need.

“The plan agreed today is an updated plan from the original presented to the IJB at the end of September. It’s the result of a tremendous amount of hard work, robust governance and working together with partners, Trade Unions and staff side colleagues.

“And it’s important to highlight despite the fact this plan is about bringing the budget back in line, we are also putting in systems to maintain quality and person safety, providing consistent sets of escalation, triggers and protocols too.”

What was agreed by the IJB?

There is a need to implement temporary, short-term measures “in year” to begin to bring the budget gap down. It is anticipated these will run until the end of the financial year (the end of March 2025).

They are:

• A temporary remobilisation of some Partnership staff to draw on the expertise and talent in the organisation and reduce spend on agency and bank staff -currently around £18 million each year. This may mean other, less critical functions will be reduced in the short term.
• A review of Respite Provision – to review all current, un-used respite in excess of three weeks. All new respite allocations will be capped at three weeks instead of six, unless in exceptional circumstances, with decisions made on a case to case basis.
• Raising the Threshold for Accessing Social Work Services – we will review social work assessments and reviews with a focus on prioritising those at most significant risk of harm and those most in need. This will mean funding for some packages of care will reduce.

There are also other areas in the Recovery Plan.

These are longer term pieces of work, with some to bring benefits in this financial year and others to future proof our services.

The Partnership will use the next few months to test their deliverability and then they will be formally presented as part of the savings when setting the budget for 2025 - 2026.

Fiona McKay added: “Anyone affected by the approved changes or reviews will be contacted by the Partnership in the coming weeks to inform them about what this means for them. Although work needs to happen at pace, we will not do so without communicating with people and our staff first.”