Issue - meetings

Background:

This report advised that the Council has a statutory duty to provide and support vulnerable individuals, should they require residential or nursing care services. Residential care services supported a person’s health, wellbeing and safety, assisting individuals with everyday tasks such as personal care.

The report explained that Medway Council currently had 29 Residential and 12 Nursing homes Care Quality Commission (CQC) registered for people over the age of 65 years. For working aged adults there were 32 learning disability care homes and 8 mental health care homes registered with the CQC, for people between the ages of 18-64 years.

The report set out the proposal for Medway Council to jointly procure these services with NHS Kent and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), to provide residential and nursing care across Medway. The report explained that this option was preferred to the Council undertaking the procurement on its own as this would support the integration of health and social care services and enable the Council and CCG to deliver the services in parallel in terms of price and practice.

Subject to approval by the Cabinet, a procurement process would commence. It was anticipated that the outcome of this would be presented to Cabinet in May / June 2021 for the Cabinet to approve the award of the contract to the successful bidder, with the service expected to go live in Summer 2021.

The Procurement Board considered the report on 21 October 2020 and supported the recommendation to commence a procurement process, as set out in paragraph 26 of the Cabinet report.

An Exempt Appendix contained information in relation to comparative prices for residential and nursing care services.

A Diversity Impact Assessment had been undertaken in relation to the proposed procurement process, as set out in Appendix 1 to the report.

Reasons:

The procurement of residential and nursing care services will deliver a service that will enable the following:

i)     Achievement of strategic objectives by updating the terms and conditions of residential and nursing care contracts.

ii)    Improvement to residential care by developing a specification that focuses on health prevention and individual service user needs.

iii)   Meeting the demand of the local population by working with care providers in recognising the changing needs of the local population, i.e. by increasing the number of specialist complex and challenging behaviour beds.

iv)  Provision of sustainable services by increasing capacity and improving quality of care within a price point that is sustainable for providers.