Written evidence submitted by the Camphill Village Trust Limited [SOC 049]

 

The Camphill Village Trust Limited - overview

  1. The Camphill Village Trust Limited is a charity, founded in 1954 and part of a wider international Camphill Movement, providing housing, support and day activities to over 390 adults mainly with moderate learning disabilities in nine community settings.

 

  1. The charity’s communities are based in:  Malton and Danby in North Yorkshire; Watford and St Albans in Hertfordshire; Stourbridge in Dudley in the West Midlands and also partly in Worcestershire; Lydney and Newnham on Severn in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire.  Some of its communities are rural or semi-rural congregate settings and some are made up of properties and activities dispersed and integrated in an urban context. The day activities are provided in the context of cafes, bakeries, creameries, gardens and farms, pottery, woodwork and craft workshops, plus art therapy studios, education and supported employment opportunities, have been developed in a person centred and co – productive approach/culture.

 

  1. The charity’s houses, with one exception, are not registered as residential care homes but as supported living, as such people being supported are tenants and receive housing benefit (at the exempted level) to fund their tenancy.

 

  1. The charity has approximately 500 employees, supported by 65 resident volunteers who come as gap year students or similar from overseas under tier 5 charity worker visas or from Europe independently or through the Erasmus Plus scheme. 

Reason for making this submission

  1. The Select Committee will receive many submissions from mainstream providers and from their representatives.  The charity is not a mainstream provider in the traditional sense but, with other charities in the Camphill Movement, offers a valued alternative to people with learning disabilities, based on the development of strong relationships and valued contribution. The charity wishes to provide evidence in response to question 1 in support the evidence of other providers with respect to funding and related challenges as well as highlight the particular additional areas of challenge it faces. 

Executive summary

Question 1:  Impact of 2015 Spending Review and Local Government Finance Settlement, including the two per cent council tax precept, the Better Care Fund, and the National Living Wage, on whether funding available for social care is sufficient to enable local authorities to fulfil their duties under the Care Act 2014 to assess and meet the needs of people in need of care and support.

General concerns

  1. Despite supplementing public funding for the social care it provides with significant (30% of income in the last financial year) fundraising and legacy income and to a much lesser degree (7%) with income from its cafes, farms and other activities (although overall these day support activities operate at a loss) and the goodwill of volunteers, nonetheless the cumulative impact of funding reductions, increased regulatory and compliance costs, and the impact of increased staff costs are having an impact.  The charity last financial year sustained for the first time a substantial deficit affecting its reserves and has had operating deficits in the last few years. Ultimately the quality and safety of the charity’s services and its ability to sustain its unique form of social care provision will be at risk. 

 

  1. In common with other providers, in recent years all but one of its placing local authorities has ceased Supported People funding.  Funding for extras, like day services, is being reduced and in some local authority areas withdrawn entirely. There has been no compensatory increase in other social care funding but the underlying need for support remains the same.  In a rural community context, it is not practical for the charity simply to cease to provide those activities without a material impact on the lives of people it supports. 

 

  1. Last year the increases received from local authorities were on average well below 1%, many involved no increase at all. While employment-related costs increased by over 1.25%.  The hourly rates received from local authorities for the same type of support varies considerably across the charity’s nine communities (from £11 an hour to £15.50 an hour, and £17 an hour in the south east) making a common approach to employees’ pay and conditions difficult to maintain.

 

  1. Reassessments of need in the main are leading to decreased packages of support.  Some people the charity supports with mild to moderate needs, (but nonetheless with support needs that would increase if support was withdrawn or reduced to that level), are now receiving little or no social care funding.  The shared houses and community setting makes it difficult in practice for the charity to reduce support to the funded level so the withdrawal of funding is not triggering increased needs and reassessment of funding.  New placements in the charity’s communities are needing a higher level of support, but this is not leading necessarily to significantly increased funding.  As funding becomes increasingly focused only on substantial needs, there is a serious risk regarding the unmet needs and wellbeing of those people with mild and moderate needs.

 

  1. Despite relative stability in the numbers of people being supported, overall social care income declined by 6% in the last financial year, following similar levels of reductions in the previous three years. This ongoing trend is unsustainable.

 

  1. Regulatory and compliance expectations are increasingly adding costs both in terms of staff resource and infrastructure (particularly regarding the appropriate handling of data). The charity has seen little evidence of innovative commissioning or market development as the Care Act outlines.  The focus has been on cost reduction via minimum care packages and imposition of maximum funding ceiling regardless of capacity. Indeed, some recent commissioning and contractual approaches appear bedded within historic approaches which drive down cost and lack any focus on individual needs, and there is real concern that individual and personal budgets provide local authorities with a short term funding reduction platform, rather than a longer term and sustainable individual holistic approach.

 

  1. There is little or no evidence of “joined up” commissioning or service development with social care and health - and preventative and post hospital discharge support initiatives that are co-produced and partnered with innovative providers are not common.

 

  1. Staff costs are increasing above the level of local authority funding increases.  Auto-enrolment has added to payroll costs with the prospect of employer contributions increasing to 3% in the years ahead.  The charity supports the principle of auto-enrolment and compulsory contributions but is concerned that the costs involved will not be matched by increases in social care funding.

 

  1. Developments in case law regarding working time regulations and annual leave have led to annual leave entitlement of 4 weeks now being applied to all overtime and sleep in allowances, with a significant increase in cost again not matched by increased funding. 

 

  1. The charity’s staff have not had a consolidated pay review since 2011, save that the National Living Wage was introduced for the lowest paid staff in April 2016.  In future years the National Living Wage will add substantially to payroll costs each year through to 2020 with 5.5% per annum pay increases for the majority of the charity’s staff and maintaining pay differentials for other staff over that period will simply not be possible. Being a support worker, while rewarding in many ways, is a demanding and complex job and pay levels in the sector do not reflect that and the charity is concerned the sector will increasingly struggle to reward the majority of its staff at anything other than the National Living Wage. It is becoming harder to compete with the retail sector.  The charity, already struggles to recruit to more senior positions with additional responsibilities (team leader, registered manager etc) and is worried about the longer term implications for quality and safety in the sector. 

 

  1. Like other social care providers, the uncertainty created by recent case law regarding sleep in allowances and the National Minimum Wage represents on going and substantial financial risk that needs urgent government action to resolve and without that is likely to lead to providers withdrawing from the provision of sleep ins. 

 

Concerns particular to the type of provision provided by the charity

Impact of strength-based assessment model

  1. Increasingly the charity’s communities are not receiving funding for the day support they provide, yet without it people’s formal and informal support needs would clearly increase.  The charity is concerned that the increased use following the Care Act of a strength based approach to assessments that take into account the environment, facilities and support (e.g. informal circles of friendship) that exist around an individual will result in decreased funding for the community-style provision typically found in CVT and other Camphill communities. 

 

  1. The community context provides a supportive background of support, activity, meaning and purpose for people but it cannot be provided without adequate funding, and an assessment model that presumes such support and activity can continue but does not contribute to its funding is fundamentally flawed. 

Concerns particular to the type of provision provided by the charity (continued)

Impact of strength-based assessment model (continued)

  1. There is a serious risk this approach will lead to these valued alternative forms of support being unsustainable; reducing choice, opportunities and meaningful purpose to people with disabilities and their families, and increasing rather than reducing isolation. All these negative outcomes being counter- productive to the core objectives of the various Think Local Act Personal initiatives.

 

The limiting of housing benefit for social tenants

 

  1. The charity provides both housing and support, often in a community setting.  12% of the charity’s income last financial year was in the form of rental income from people it supports.

 

  1. In the 2015 Autumn Statement the Government announced it would limit housing benefit to social tenants from April 2017 to the local housing allowance that would be available privately.

 

  1. This would represent a very significant reduction in income for our Communities.  For example, in Botton Village this would reduce rental income by £37 per week, £1924 a year, for each person being supported.  Assuming this reduction is typical, then the overall reduction income for the charity is some £729,196, approximately a fifth of the charity’s rental income. 

 

  1. The higher rate of housing benefit is an essential element of the charity’s income stream that enables the provision of good quality housing and helps support the maintenance of the community infrastructure and additional day activities that prove a genuine sense of purpose and meaning, which make its communities so valued.

Impact of Brexit on recruitment of volunteers

  1. The charity engages overseas volunteers to assist in its day activities and this is as an important way for the charity to offer more to people its supports than is directly funded by social care funding.  Its volunteers are mainly residential volunteers from overseas.  This is because some communities are not well located to be accessible and attract many volunteers from the local area, and because the multi-cultural enrichment offered by young people from overseas is valued by people being supported. 

 

  1. However, the tier 5 charity worker visas for non-European volunteers prevent any “pocket money” being given to supplement the board and lodging provided to those volunteers.  This means unless the volunteers have their own private resources, they are unable to have any spending money while they are with the charity even though they may be volunteering for periods as long as a year.  In contrast the charity is able to offer a small weekly sum (approximately £25) to volunteers from Europe placed with it by volunteering agencies. It also receives European funding through the Erasmus Plus Scheme which help cover the costs involved in having volunteers in its communities. 

 

  1. The charity is concerned that Brexit will affect the viability (both financially and in terms of ability to recruit) of supplementing its provision with overseas volunteers.  The charity recommends that specific consideration is given as to how overseas volunteering is supported in the UK charity sector.

 

 

Conclusion and recommendations

  1. The present sector context is unsustainable and unless addressed will lead to wider sector crisis – with reduced capacity for vulnerable adults, increased burden upon health services and the gradual return to a more crisis and reactionary model of social care, based increasingly on minimum standards and ironically an approach that presents as being individually focused but delivers higher levels of isolated individuals who are detached, rather than supported to become   equal citizens.

 

  1. Social Care funding needs to be increased – urgently.

 

  1. The positive rhetoric around person centred and co-produced service models as presented by CQC, the Department of Health and leading sector bodies needs to be transposed into bolder and shared local authority and health commissioning approaches. A positive, future focused, rather than a short-sighted, reactionary and cost saving commissioning culture is required to avoid a regressive and crisis driven sector.

 

  1. Initiatives, such as NHS building the right support: a national Implementation plan, must include genuine and stronger partnership working with independent providers to translate good intention and theory into workable outcomes.

 

  1. Greater awareness of the accumulative impact of collective social care, housing and employment changes upon the sector is required, as various government department’s cost saving initiatives combined with unfunded changes to employment terms combine to place providers, such as CVT, in an increasingly vulnerable position.

 

August 2016