Decision details

West Sussex County Council and system partners developed an 18-month plan prior to Winter 21/22 to support the health and social care system to manage additional demand during pressured periods. As set out in key decision report AS02 21/22 the Council commissioned services to support  hospital discharge and additional pressures in health and social care commencing with an initial term up to the 31 Mar 22. Initiatives included a mixture of care to be provided within a person’s own home as well as short stay beds within residential, nursing, and extra care services.  As set out in key decision report OKD27 (21/22) the contracts which were awarded through tender processes have the potential to extend beyond their current end date of 31 Mar 22 and the ability to flex the scale and volume of provision up and down as the demand across the system requires.

Following the initial decision and as a result of the Omicron outbreak, it was clear that a greater volume of service provision would be required and therefore as part of emergency planning additional contracts were directly awarded and further processes were undertaken to enable additional service.  However, not all of these contracts have the ability to be extended and come to an end on 31 Mar 2022.

Over winter 21/22 funding for the commissioning provision came from a mixture of Council winter pressure funding and Hospital Discharge Payments (HDP).  HDP comes to an end on 31 March 2022 and in response to continued pressures and impending changes to the funding arrangements within the NHS, recommendations are based on funding for 3 months from funds committed by West Sussex Clinical Commissioning Group.

The Director of Adults and Health has approved;

(1)        The extension of 7 domiciliary care block round contracts, 11 home first contracts and 34 block residential beds which have the means to extend from 1 April 2022 until 30 June 2022 for a projected cumulative cost of circa £826k;

(2)        The direct award of block contracts for 37 residential beds and 4 domiciliary care block rounds to commence from 1 April 2022 until 30 June 2022 with a cumulative value of circa £677k; and

(3)        The extension of core hospital discharge domiciliary care contracts under the home first pathway for a cost of £68k.  These will be at the increased weekly block hours commissioned by way of previous variation on 30 June 2021.

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