Decision details

Hamilton Court is a supported living service and provides support for people with learning disabilities and autism living in the community. Accommodation is a small housing complex owned by South Yorkshire Housing Association.
The Registered Manager, Service Manager and Head of Service have acknowledged the need to further increase capacity within Hamilton Court, building on the existing support offer in place which is currently provided by Doncaster Councils existing support staff. The aim being to enable us to facilitate and support the implementation of the current support schedule for individuals who are supported at Hamilton Court. This in turn will assist in maximising a ‘person centred, strengths based approach’; connecting people to their communities, enabling people to live independently, focusing more resources to supporting people at home. The additional weekly capacity will create 151.5 hours additional support. The additional staffing as required for
the service to remain Well Led through the Care Quality Commission
(CQC).
An analysis was completed to look at what support schedules for each individual in houses 1, 2 and 3 at Hamilton Court, and what permanent positions were already in our budget.

It is understand that the existing support is block purchased from a commissioned service provided, however this clearly only covers the basic support and leaves nothing in budget to allow any leave and training cover.
Annual leave and training therefore do take place, and without this additional cover individuals’
support hours quite simply are not delivered.
It is appreciated that this is a large budget request, however it is felt this is essential in order to confidently say we are delivering what has been assessed for these individuals and what they are entitled to.
The required support hours for with the combined 12 support schedules is 734 hours. Permanent contracted hours when fully staffed is 759 hours, therefore there are surplus hours of only 25.
Annual Leave, averaging per week 139 hours, which is 18.3% of the current contracted hours - 759.
Training per week averaging 13 hours, which is 1.7% of the current contracted hours – 759.
A total of 152 hours per week is required in addition to the 734 hours support on schedules.
We already have 25 hours of this, therefore we have a shortfall of 127 hours per week.
To create an additional 127 hours, this would in itself incur another 25.4 hours leave and training (at 20% of the 127) per week. Therefore there would be a requirement to increase the contracted hours by 152.4.
The proposal is therefore to increase the staffing budget, in order to create the following positions: – 1 X 31.5 hour (nights grade 6), 4 X 30 hour (days 1 X grade 7 and 3 X grade 6) – total of 151.5 hours.
There is currently recruitment to four x 20 hour support worker positions to support the individuals, due to a move into the flats. This 80 hours was calculated using the same method as above. Approval for these have already confirmed by Carolyn Nice on a 12 month basis

Approval of funding to increase staffing capacity within Hamilton Court so to enable the provision by the Council of an additional 151.5 hours of support for individuals who use Hamilton Court and remain in the “Well Led” Care Quality Commission (“CQC”) category of inspection.

ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS CONSIDERED AND REJECTED
Option 1: Maintain existing service provision. Maintaining current levels of service provision will result in the lack of capacity to meet the current requirement of existing service users. This option will result in greater risks in relation to complaints, safeguarding and inability to delivery essential requirements in line with CQC.
REJECTED Should the decision be rejected, the impact will be the service is unable to meet the essential needs of individuals, as is detailed in their formal reviews