Market Position Statement 2025-2040 Introduction - Financial pressures
Adult Social Care faces considerable pressures on its resources, capacity, and ability to keep up with the increasing demand for services. Individuals are presenting with more complex needs, which is resulting in higher spend on care provision. There are several factors which contributes to increasing costs for adult social care, one of the primary reasons over the previous two years has been due to provider fees (uplifts) and increasing acuity and complexity of needs. In addition, the demographic pressures mentioned above and increasing demand mean that in the coming years we need to consider how we make best use of the available budget to meet the needs of those who are most vulnerable.
Walsall Adult Social Care’s 2023/2024 expenditure
The 2023/2024 net expenditure for Adult Social Care in Walsall accounted for just over 21% of the Council’s net expenditure
| Local Authority | Total revenue net expenditure £000s | Total ASC net expenditure £000s | ASC as a % of total net expenditure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walsall | 578,402 | 121,912 | 21.08% |
Adult Social Care net expenditure for 2023/2024
Total Adult Social Care net expenditure for 2023/2024 was £121.9m. Proportion of spend on staffing costs amounted to 12.8% (£15.6m). People care provision amounted to 78.9% (£96.1m). Adult Social Care net expenditure has increased 42.4% since 2021 (24.5% in 2023/2024, 12.5% in 2022/2023 and 1.6% in 2021/2022).
Breakdown of 2023/2024 spend
| Expenditure by area | Total net spend (£m) | Of which staff (£m) | Non-staff spend (£m) |
|---|---|---|---|
| People (provision of care) | 96.1 | 0.3 | 95.9 |
| Assistive equipment and technology | 0.1 | 0 | 0.1 |
| Social Work Teams & Safeguarding | 13.2 | 12.7 | 0.6 |
| Information and early intervention | 0.9 | 0.3 | 0.6 |
| Commissioning, strategy and support | 11.6 | 2.4 | 9.2 |
| Total | 121.9 | 15.6 | 106.3 |
2023/24
| Total gross expenditure | £150.4m |
|---|---|
| Less income | £28.5m |
| Net expenditure | £121.9m |
The Walsall Adult Social Care net budget (excluding Public Health budget) for 2024/25 is £91.683m. As of March 2025, an overspend of £4.816m is forecast.
Quality of Care and Sustainability of the Care Market
Quality of services is a key priority nationally and is a key issue in Walsall. A review of the quality assurance of commissioned provision across the Walsall system was undertaken in 2024 with a resulting Improvement Plan. We are developing our local Quality Assurance and Improvement approaches working towards continuous improvement. This will ensure good quality across the market is embedded. There are measures to manage quality concerns, including monitoring of quality across the sector. Our ambition in Walsall is to work in partnership with good providers, delivering good quality services. We want to improve on our provider CQC ratings across the Borough and want to work with the market to achieve this.
Strategic improvement priority: Quality and Quality Assurance
One vision is for improved quality of services delivered by the provider market with support from the Council and Walsall Together, our Place Based Partnership.
Key priorities are:
- Delivering our planned quality improvement programme for Adult Social Care.
- Improved quality service performance across the Social Care provider market for commissioned services and other provision
- Improved challenge, accountability, leadership and decision-making across quality assurance and improvement.
It is important that we provide transparency around our budgets and commissioning practices. We will move to outcomes focused commissioning, establishing closer working relationships with stakeholders to implement strengths-based approaches, work jointly to shape the market to respond to local needs and improve the transparency of brokerage arrangements and placement processes. We will also take an evidenced based approach to understanding care costs and setting fees, as this will be vital in developing and sustaining new models of care.
We will continue to engage in sector-led improvement work at a regional level and with providers which will support all in a journey of continuous improvement. Alongside this, we will seek to innovate, introducing more preventative based approaches and exploring the implementation of new technology as a potential route to improving quality and efficiency. Our forward-looking intentions and vision are set out in these Market Position Statements for key services.