Now we can stop lying. Not that we were lying but a lot of people didn’t believe us when we said the planned changes weren’t about saving money. We said these changes were about improving services, giving customers more control, helping people be more independent. And we meant it. We said we would want to make these improvements whatever the budget situation. And we meant it.Yes we also said we were required to be more efficient. But that too was a good thing because being more efficient didn’t have to mean spending less it could mean buying more for the same amount of money. True we did tend to talk about efficiency saving and express this in how much money we needed to save to hit our efficiency targets.
Take the example of help for people with a learning disability. We have been trying to close those big draftee old Day Centre buildings for years. Much better to offer people leisure opportunities or adult learning than “day care”. So for a number of years now we have offered, swimming, ten pin bowling, horse ridding, archery, literacy and numeracy classes as well as basic computer skills. We also offer travel training to help people gain the confidence to use public transport and we provide job experience placements and help people to get part time work .All of this takes place away from those large institutional day centre buildings. So we really don’t need the buildings which are hard to heat and expensive to maintain. But people seem rather attached to them. Then along comes Personalisation the idea that rather than provide” take it or leave it” services we give people the money and they use it how they want, on holidays, going to the pictures or getting sky T.V. So we close the day centres down and the money spent on staffing, building maintenance and transport is divided up and given to people with a learning disability. Minus 3 per cent efficiency saving.
Then the financial crises hits and the Government slash public sector budgets. Now local authorities have to make huge financial savings. Plans are draw up to cut budgets by 25 to 30 percent. We are no longer talking about closing day centres and reinvesting the money in Personalisation we are talking about closing daycentres because we can’t afford them. So now we don’t have to lie we are doing it to save money.
Blair McPherson was until recently a senior manager in a large local authority he is author of People management in a harsh financial climate published by www.russellhouse.co.uk .