Derby City Council is looking to make a significant investment of £2.6million in Adult Social Care to develop and improve an essential service which provides vital care for younger adults with learning disabilities, whilst giving their unpaid carers a short break from their caring responsibilities.
Bonsall View provides planned short breaks for adults aged 18-64 with learning disabilities and complex care and support needs, and respite care when it’s needed in an emergency.
Significantly refurbishing and re-modelling the layout of Morleston Day Centre will enable the number of beds offered by the service to be increased from five to seven, and the building will also be more efficient to run.
Currently the service is based in a wing of the former Arboretum House Care Home. The building is too large for the service’s needs, and £2.6 million of capital funding has been prioritised by the Council to develop and modernise the former Morleston Day Centre on the same site, and relocate the service. Both buildings are currently Council-owned.
The Council has identified a shortage of suitable supported accommodation for adults with complex needs, and relocating Bonsall View will address current and future requirements.
The Council is also working with Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust to explore re-purposing Arboretum House for its Community First service, which provides nursing, occupational therapy and physiotherapy support to help people become independent and return home more quickly after a hospital stay.
Cabinet members will be asked to take the first steps at its meeting on Wednesday 7 January, to progress with this major investment project and also to outline Arboretum House being surplus to the Council’s requirements.
Councillor Alison Martin, Cabinet Member for Heath and Adult Care, said:
Bonsall View provides essential, enriching care for adults with learning difficulties and complex needs, and we know that it’s highly regarded by service users and their families. Their unpaid carers are often family members too and it’s vital that they have the back-up support they need.
By relocating the service to a more suitable building, we can actually increase the number of beds and make it more sustainable, ensuring we’re prioritising this area of Adult Social Care. It’s also an exciting opportunity to relocate the Community First service, which would be better suited to the accommodation at Arboretum House, and would see two vital adult care services in one location. We look forward to exploring this possibility with the Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust.
Community First is delivered by the NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with the Council. The 24-bed service is currently delivered from Perth House in Chaddesden, which is owned by the Council.
Should the project progress and Perth House become vacant, its future use will come back to Cabinet for further consideration. Options could include temporary accommodation, housing, or another potential use, but it will not be used for asylum seeker accommodation.
The Cabinet meeting will be streamed live on the Council's YouTube channel from 2pm on Wednesday 7 January.