Setting Falkirk’s health and social care budget

News

Falkirk Health and Social Care Partnership, through its Board, plans our local community services. This includes social work, care at home, mental health, general practice, learning disability support, district nursing, and alcohol and drug support services – plus many more.

The Partnership’s board, called the Integration Joint Board, manages the yearly budget to fund services from Falkirk Council, NHS Forth Valley, local organisations, and community groups.

Each year, this budget must be balanced to provide the services people need within the money we have available. The budget for the current financial year is £306m, with indicative budgets for next financial year to be confirmed by NHS Forth Valley and Falkirk Council in February 2025.

As our population is living longer with more complex care needs, we are experiencing rising demand for services. The cost of running these services is also increasing due to inflation.

As a result, we are now forecasting a £20m budget gap over the next three years. This means we must adapt services, change the way we work, and secure best value for money to ensure services can continue to operate into the future.

There are three main ways we can meet this budget gap:

Raise money through charges for some services.

  • We could increase existing charges or introduce new charges.

Do things differently to save money.

  • We could redesign services or use technology to deliver services more efficiently.

Reduce the services we provide.

  • We could reduce the level of support people receive or stop some services.

We are now exploring the options available and will launch a public and partner engagement exercise to gather views about setting our budget and meeting the funding gap.

Where appropriate, our Equality and Poverty Impact Assessment (EPIA) process will help us consider the impact proposed changes may have on people with protected characteristics, and what actions are available to minimise any impact.

The options, views gathered, and evidence from the impact assessment will then be presented to the Integration Joint Board, where members from Falkirk Council, NHS Forth Valley, community organisations, carers, and people who use our services will consider and decide which budget options to take forward. The budget will be finalised at the Board’s meeting in March.

Details of how you can get involved will be available shortly. To keep informed of engagement opportunities, you can follow the Partnership at @FalkirkHSCP on X (twitter), Facebook, or LinkedIn, and sign up to receive our newsletter.