Lancashire County Council has signed a contract with Newton Europe Ltd which will transform adult social care in the county, improving the quality of services while delivering minimum savings of around £18m a year.

Known as "Passport to Independence", the programme will provide a better service and help people remain independent for as long as possible.

Its aims include reducing the number of people going into long-term residential care and helping people to return home more quickly after leaving hospital.

The contract is based on securing a minimum of £17.8m annual savings for the council, but with an ambition to save up to £30.1m per year.

County Councillor Tony Martin, cabinet member for adult and community services, said:

"As in the rest of the country, the health and social care sector in Lancashire is under extreme pressure. More people are living longer but often with ill-health and other needs in their later years. At the same time, central government funding for social care has failed to keep pace with demand. Here in Lancashire we are facing a £95m funding gap for social care in 2020/21.

"Faced with these challenges we are changing the way we work and have brought in specialist expertise to help us do this, in the form of Newton Europe who have successfully helped other councils, such as Kent, improve their services while making significant savings.

"Passport to Independence is all about helping people in Lancashire be as independent as possible for as long as possible. We want to make sure that people have the care they need and we will then stay in regular contact with them to adjust their level of support, if necessary, rather than waiting for a crisis.

"We have already trialled many of the new ways of working with really encouraging results. Our trial teams halved the number of people going into long-term residential care. The proportion of people going directly to their own homes from hospital rose by 25%. And another team completed 91% more assessments and reviews during the trial.

"Achieving these sorts of the results across the whole of the county would significantly improve the service we offer and help to make the savings we need to ensure that we can continue to provide these services in the future. Success will also help ease pressure on the health service."

Passport to Independence is particularly focused on better managing demand and reducing the overall size of care packages. Ensuring people only have the care they need makes it easier for them to return to independence and leads to better outcomes for individuals and overall financial savings.

Changes will include:

• Supporting people to get home from hospital as quickly as possible
• Developing new "reablement services", which will use occupational therapy to help people make a quick return to living independently
• Removing non-social work tasks, such as finding care home places, from social workers so they can carry out more assessments and reviews
• Bringing professionals from different fields together to make sure that care solutions are found quickly for people with complicated cases
• Providing better and more relevant information and services to people seeking advice by phone

Steve Knight, Associate Director for Newton Europe, said:

"Newton are committed to supporting Lancashire County Council to achieve a sustainable, improved way of working that delivers better outcomes for those in need of care whilst meeting financial demands.

"Newton and LCC have co-designed a programme that combines a data-driven approach with the knowledge and insight of the local teams. This has resulted in real change on the ground including enabling the citizens of Lancashire to enjoy their independence for longer, so they continue to contribute to their community and make choices about how they want to live their life. We are now looking forward to rolling out these changes to the wider county."

Based on extensive work with the county council's social care staff, the new ways of working are already being introduced in the East of the county, with roll-out imminent in the rest of the county. It is expected that the changes will have been introduced across the whole county by July this year.

Changes to practice include ensuring staff have the information to make consistent and accurate decisions, focusing on the strengths of the individual and what they can do, and ensuring that there is a clear menu of options available to and understood by staff at every stage to ensure that the individual gets the best outcome.

At the same time, the process will be made more efficient through improved scheduling, reduced paperwork and travel time and less duplication of services.