'Potential risk to the safety and wellbeing of our service users' causes BCC to end care contract with Buckinghamshire Care ltd

Buckinghamshire County Council has lost confidence in Buckinghamshire Care Ltd's ability to manage and deliver services to the standards it requires.
Buckinghamshire County CouncilBuckinghamshire County Council
Buckinghamshire County Council

Buckinghamshire Care Ltd provides day care, employment, respite, reablement and laundry services to 900 social care clients and their families. Buckinghamshire County Council is its only client. It currently employs 394 staff

It decided that it was in the best interests of service users and their families to bring the services and eligible staff back 'in-house', while a longer term solution is considered.

A report published on BCC's website said: "The Council lost confidence in Buckinghamshire Care Ltd’s ability to work to its required standards when, in November 2016, it was made aware that a number of operational and quality issues first raised by the Care Quality Commission during an inspection of one of their regulated services run by Buckinghamshire Care Ltd in April 2016 (Seeleys House) had not been satisfactorily rectified and were still in evidence."

"Despite the Council taking decisive remedial action to ensure services were able to continue in line with the standards it expects (this included additional staffing and training) the Council does not have the confidence that quality services will be delivered consistently.

"This poses a potential risk to the safety and wellbeing of our service users. With this knowledge the Council feels unable to leave delivery of care services under the management of Buckinghamshire Care Ltd."

Wendy Mallen, Deputy Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing, said: "Due to a number of operational issues related to service quality and financial management Buckinghamshire County Council has terminated its contract with Buckinghamshire Care Ltd, which provides several social care services in the county.

"The Council has lost confidence in the company's ability to deliver services to the high standards it expects and feels that it is in the best interests of both service users and staff to bring the services back 'in-house' until a longer term solution is found.

"This decision, made on 13 December 2016, was not taken lightly. However the quality of services provided to our residents – in particular their safety and wellbeing - is paramount and takes priority over everything else.

"We do not anticipate any disruption to service users or their families as frontline staff will transfer over to the Council and continue to provide services as usual."

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