PCT Accountability within the Aiming High Agenda in Cumbria?

[tester]

we wonder how much of the non ring fenced allocation of funds to PCT's in the Cumbrian area has been taken up, and on what it has been spent?  

The main problem is that PCTs' Aiming High allocation, unlike local authorities', is not ring-fenced so the Department of Health has no effective control over PCTs' spending.

According to Laura Courtney, manager of the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign, the £340m allocated through Healthy lives, Brighter Futures - the child health strategy - works out as 1.23 per cent of each PCTs' baseline budget.

"But as the money isn't ring-fenced, all the Department of Health can say is this is our expectation," she says.

A recent poll carried out by the EDCM campaign revealed that many PCTs found it difficult to identify where the Aiming High money was in their budgets, and there was no consistent understanding of what was expected of them.

"There remains a disparity between central government policy and local delivery," says Courtney.

"For example, many PCTs have told EDCM that they don't disaggregate spend on wheelchairs or equipment for disabled children from spend on adults, while others have said they 'do not expect to match' local authority investment on service improvement."

"There's a variation across the country on how much commissioners are spending," McLindon says. "There's a will in PCTs to meet the objectives of Aiming High. But it's the practicality of whether some PCTs are able to use their allocated spend against other conflicting priorities.

from an article article is published in the 13 August 2009 issue of Community Care magazine under the heading Not aiming high enough

please read full article..

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2009/08/07/112308/aiming-high-for-disabled-children-misses-funding-targets.htm



www.communitycare.co.uk is a specialist website dedicated to all areas of the social care profession.

The website is the leading online medium for those working in social care and it contains all of the articles that have been published both in Community Care magazine and online since 1995.

[val]

Interesting and potentially disappointing reading as the cynic in me wonders if any money not ring-fenced just gets absorbed in the general pool of money?

Do we have anyone from the pct coming to any of the forth-coming meetings to let us know what is happening to this money in Cumbria?

Val