Health chiefs have blamed staff shortages for people waiting longer for care assessments.
The number of adults waiting for occupational therapy or care assessments by Lincolnshire County Council was 67 per cent higher than the target timeframe between April and June this year, writes Local Democracy Reporter Oliver Castle.
The assessments are carried out by council health professionals on people with a physical or mental illness to determine whether they need additional support.
Officials have blamed staff shortages and the difficulty to recruit experienced social workers to carry out these assessments.
Martin Samuels, executive director of adult care and community wellbeing at LCC, told an overview and scrutiny management board meeting that the waiting list had “lower risk individuals”.
He said people who have previously been assessed by the council are at lower risk than those who are waiting for the first time, and that often reviews “lead to no action of any kind”.
Mr Samuels said that a shortage of experienced carers meant that the council has limited resources to carry out the regular assessments on everyone on the waiting list.
He added: “There’s a national shortage of qualified social workers. Social workers are really difficult to recruit.
“Lincolnshire, for some considerable length of time, has found it difficult to recruit level two social workers – experienced social workers.
“There are multiple reasons for that, but part of the issue is the national shortage.”
But Coun Martin Hill was concerned about the safety of those who will be waiting longer for a care assessment.
He said: “If somebody is being abused by their carer, the one person they daren’t say anything to is the person.
“I’m not saying it happens in Lincolnshire, I’m just saying in terms of assurance that safeguarding is being upheld – and there have been cases, as we know – the one person the person is being cared for daren’t is the carer who is perhaps not doing their job properly.”
But Mr Samuels stressed that he was ‘absolutely confident’ that the council had a ‘robust’ safeguarding process to deal with such issues.
