GREATER involvement with people receiving care and firms losing contracts have been identified as lessons learnt following a fallout over a service shake-up.

Carers and those they support to remain in their own homes hit out at changes to contracts earlier this year which will see some providers in the south of Monmouthshire change.

Due to anger at the changes the council’s combined opposition, at a meeting picketed by carers and supporters including clients, forced a review of the contract process and how decisions were made.

County councillors will consider a report giving an overview of the process, and lessons already learnt, at a special scrutiny meeting on Wednesday, July 9.

The Labour-led council said it retendered domiciliary care contracts as part of a revamp of how care at home is provided and to try better manage costs as well as provide common employment terms for care workers.

It divided the south of the county into three areas; Chepstow town and rural, Caldicot town and The Levels and rural with firms awarded one area each as it wanted to move away from buying care packages on an ad-hoc basis.

Magor-based Lougher Home Care, which had operated across the area, was awarded the The Levels and rural area which meant it would no longer operate in Caldicot and Chepstow and clients would be allocated new providers.

Under the contracts staff are able to transfer with existing terms and conditions protected but many working for Lougher said they didn’t want to join either Radis Community Care, that holds the Chepstow contracts, or Care Quality Services that will operate in Calidicot and would likely look for alternative employment outside of care.

The council’s Conservative opposition also said the changes had resulted in a locally based firm losing contracts to national firms and questioned if the council’s procurement process disadvantaged small businesses.

No formal challenges to the contract decisions were made under the procurement process by any of the 13 bidders.

The council’s performance and overview scrutiny committee will consider the report by social services’ commissioning manager, Ceri York, at the special meeting.

Her report states when contracts were awarded 161 people were written to advising them of a change to their existing provider and 35, or 22 per cent, have since asked about direct payments which allow people to employ the carer of their choice.

It also identified ways the procurement process, which was run in partnership with Ardal the body that buys services and products for Monmouthshire, Torfaen, Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan councils, could be simplified and run to “more realistic timescales”.

Increased engagement with people using the service could be built into the timeline, the report has suggested, so they would have a say in how the contract process is decided, and it also identified there has been a negative impact on them.

Contracts were awarded in March but service providers aren’t due to change until August 19.