Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with which external stakeholders his Department has discussed contingency planning for provider failure in the social care market.

In 2013, Government carried out a public consultation (‘Oversight in Adult Social Care’) on a detailed set of proposals for market oversight and provider failure.

The feedback from stakeholders including individual local authorities, local authority membership organisations, individual care providers, provider representative organisations and commercial experts formed the basis of a number of reforms in the Care Act 2014 that ensures people do not go without the care they need when their providers’ business fails. This includes:

1. Duties on local authorities to temporarily meet the needs of individuals and their carers where their provider is unable to carry on because of business failure. Statutory guidance to support local authorities to discharge these functions was subject to a full public consultation and can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/care-act-2014-statutory-guidance-for-implementation

The Department also worked with the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, the Local Government Association, and the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) to produce a guide to support local authorities to develop contingency plans for provider failure in the social care market. Numerous stakeholders, including local authorities, providers and insolvency practitioners were involved in the development of the guide and participated in the LGiU consultation exercises.

The guidance can be found at:

http://www.lgiu.org.uk/report/care-and-continuity-guide/

The Department commissioned the consultancy Cordis Bright to produce guidance to support local authorities with market oversight at the local level to enable them to meet their new responsibilities under the Care Act for ensuring continuity of care in the event of a provider business failure. The materials were produced following extensive input from both councils and providers.

2. New duties for the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to oversee the finances of care providers which are either large or whose provision is geographically concentrated as their financial failure would make it difficult for local authorities to discharge their statutory responsibilities.

The CQC oversight function will provide early warning to relevant local authorities in the event that one of these providers is likely to fail and their services cease. This will allow local authorities time to implement contingency plans.