The Argyll and Bute Integration Joint Board (IJB) today (Wednesday 17 September 2025) approved a proposal to introduce a threshold of care for care at home services across Argyll and Bute.
This threshold would be set at 28 hours per week. A copy of the approved proposal paper is available online here along with the final consultation report.
This decision follows an agreement by the IJB at its meeting on 28 May 2025 that the Health and Social Care Partnership should explore the option of introducing a threshold level of care. Officers were asked to assess the impact of the change, engage and consult and identify the risk of a change and an internal policy of the delivery of care through this consultation.
The public consultation was held by the HSCP between 24 July and 31 August on the proposal. It aimed to gather views from communities, staff, providers, and carers in response to increasing demand, workforce challenges, and financial constraints in rural care delivery.
The paper presented to the IJB on 17 September outlined details of the feedback received and highlighted that based on the increased need, assessed impact and the availability of residential care, for both respite and longer term, the final proposal would be a recommendation for a threshold of care set at 28 hours per week. This would be reviewed annually considering the wider care environment to ensure that the HSCP continues to deliver person centred care within available resources and manages ongoing need and risk.
Evan Beswick, Chief Officer of Argyll and Bute HSCP, said:
“We recommended the threshold of care policy to the Integration Joint Board today as a proportionate policy choice to help us to deliver care within the staff and budget we have at our disposal, prioritise those individuals within our communities with the greatest need and make access to care fairer across all areas of Argyll and Bute.
“We would like to thank all the members of the community and our staff who took part in the recent consultation and attended a series of events where we explored this issue through our engagement process. I was humbled by the conversations I had through this process – some challenging, some supportive – and the overwhelming sense of a public wanting the space to talk to us about the future of health and social care.
“My team and I are acutely aware that the financial situation across social care in Scotland is even more challenging looking ahead to next year. This is an important step forward in meeting that challenge, but there is much more to be done. Conversations with the communities we serve are an essential component of our work over the year ahead.
“We will now be working with those individuals and their families who may be affected by the policy decision made today to discuss the range of options that are available to them. These conversations will be carried out in a measured, listening and compassionate manner so that together we can hopefully agree a way forward that meets the needs of all parties concerned.”
Responses to the consultation were received through both in-person sessions and an online survey. The consultation was attended across Argyll and Bute in person, by Microsoft Teams and with 232 online responses. Stakeholder groups were also undertaken to ensure that key staff and service providers could explore and input into the consultation response.