DAY Care Centres could have fully re-opened in Powys – if the number of people wanting to use them was there, a social services chief has said.
At a meeting of the council ‘s Health and Care scrutiny committee on Wednesday, April 16 councillors were given a presentation on Powys County Council’s move towards “day opportunities” for adults with care and support needs and older people.
The service reorganisation has been seen as a move away from the day care centre based services which closed at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic and were re-opened in phases from August 2022.
According to the council the new model will focus on “community inclusion, increasing independence, and supporting people to live their lives, their way.”
Head of adult social services Sharon Frewin said: “It’s worth noting that since Covid-19 we’ve seen dwindling numbers of people attending day services and people choosing to do different things.
“A lot more people want to do individual activities or small groups of people and focussing on social and leisure, activities.
“Most of the time they use the day service bases (centres) as just that, where they come in the morning and the majority of the time go back out into the community to access activities.
Powys Independent Cllr Gareth E Jones pointed to the data in the report on day care centre use and said: “If my sums are correct, there’s been a drop in a third of the numbers accessing the service and there’s also been a 30 per cent drop in the number of days available.”
Cllr Glyn Preston (Liberal Democrat) said: “It’s not a uniform trend across all the sites; some have seen a drop of three or four (people) I think it’s difficult to describe that as dwindling.
With the council’s “ability to signpost people” towards services about to increase Cllr Preston said: “We might actually have an increase in the number of people who are accessing our services, and do we have the capacity to deal with that?”
Social care delivery senior manager Hazel Jukes said: “Pre-Covid-19 they (day centres) were run five days a week with varying numbers across the county.
“Post-Covid-19 we have opened with offers to be full time in all services.
“We haven’t had the referrals to do that, so the days are set on the number of people we have had referrals for.
“We are business as usual, if we had extra referrals we would re-open the extra days.”
She added that discussion had taken place with social workers to explain what facilities are available at the day care centres.
She added that that her team has the “records” of people who attended pre-Covid-19 and post-Covid-19 and have “tracked” all the individuals who have not returned.
Committee chairwoman Cllr Amanda Jenner (Conservative) asked if there was any explanation as to “why” people had moved away from using day care centre based services?
Ms Jukes said: “It’s a difficult one to answer, it’s a different cohort of people with different expectations, and the feedback is that people were not looking to go to a day care centre.”
Recommendations from the committee will be added to the report before it goes to a meeting of the Liberal Democrat/Labour cabinet for a decision and the changes are expected to be in place this autumn.
The report shows:
Pre-Covid-19 – there were 322 people accessing day care centre based services:
Of the 14 day care centres 12 were open five days a week, one was open for four days and one for three days a week.
Post-Covid-19 – there are 213 people accessing day care centre based services.
Of the 14 centres seven are open five days a week, one is open four days a week, two are open three days a week, two are open one day a week and two are closed.
