Carers will be monitored electronically to make sure they provide the care they are supposed to.
Gloucestershire County Council bosses say the Electronic Call Monitoring (ECM)scheme is not about keeping tabs on people but it will lead to major savings and keep people “safe”.
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Kathy Williams
The ECM system will initially only apply to care professionals who help people with learning disabilities.
Carers will check in to the system when they arrive at a client’s house and check out when they leave while alerts will be flagged when a carer doesn’t arrive within a particular timeframe.
At the moment the county council commissions carers to provide a certain amount of care but it has no concrete way of knowing if the number of hours commissioned, and paid for, is actually being delivered.
Accurately tracking the movements of carers will change that, allowing the council to only pay them for the service they actually provide.
The scheme was piloted by a handful of providers in Gloucestershire last year, showing the council it can expect savings in the region of seven per cent.
The learning disability community based care budget is worth £21 million a year.
The era of NHS patients being shunted around hospitals needs to end, an expert group says.