Sheffield councillor calls for better funding of adult social care

Sheffield councillor Angela Argenzio, who chairs a key council committee, calls for better government funding of adult social care

Transcript

00:00 So, Angela Argentio, you're the chair of the Sheffield City Council Committee that deals

00:07 with adult health and social care, aren't you? And obviously that's a massive thing

00:11 now, a massive portfolio. I'm just wondering, you've got budget fears that are coming up,

00:17 but what do you feel the main challenges are for providing the service in Sheffield?

00:21 The challenges are providing the services better with a smaller budget. But we are meeting

00:34 those challenges by working differently and being more agile. The thing that could help

00:45 us the most in terms of budget challenge would be to have long-term funding from central

00:54 government. So over the last 13 years, the amount of money that has come to local government

01:00 and local authorities has diminished. And the amount of people needing social services

01:11 has increased. That is mostly due to our ageing population. But also what we find is that

01:16 we have people with more complex needs that have care packages that are more expensive.

01:24 So I am very proud of all the work that we've done over the last year and a half in the

01:34 portfolio, really complex, very cross-party, very positive.