Hertfordshire County Council's adult care services are "resilient under sustained demand" according to a report, as officers dealt with over 80,000 calls for help over the past year.

The fourth quarter performance report was presented to the members of the Adult Care Services Committee on Thursday, July 2.

Alex Ogle, performance, intelligence and improvement lead, as well as one of the co-authors of the report, said: "This is a bit of a kind of end-of-year 25/26 review. There is a lot of stuff in here."

The report stated adult care services manage heavy workloads across the department, with 80,630 requests for support, 28,741 assessments, 29,305 reviews and 19,757 hospital discharges supported over the last 12 months.

Annual review performance stands at 67.2% and is described as "resilient overall under sustained demand", although improving the score remains a priority.

Strengths include supporting people to regain their independence at home (76%), increased independence after hospital discharge (10.3%), safeguarding outcomes (95.6%), and independence improvements for people with a learning disability (84.4%).

Areas for improvement include uptake of direct payments (29.2%), adult satisfaction (61%), perceived control over daily life (74.6%), carers' social contact (28.3%) and carers' access to information (64.5%).

Direct payments in adult social care are funds provided directly to residents by the local authority to arrange their own care and support, instead of leaving it to the council. The payments are said to give residents "control and flexibility" over managing their needs and support.

The report stated: "Direct payment uptake is 29.2%, slightly below target, with actions underway to support improvement through the year.

"Uptake continues to be affected by personal assistant shortages and opportunities to further strengthen practitioner confidence, simplify processes and improve consistency of offer."

Despite this, uptake of direct payments was generally low in other comparative councils. The highest, Nottingham, reported a 38.1% uptake, while the lowest, Cambridgeshire, stood at 17.2%.

Cllr Lesley Greensmyth (Conservative, Flamstead End and Turnford), said: "My question is: you get the information on the people who get funding through Hertfordshire. What about the people who are self-funding in doing things? Do you have access to information from them as well?"

Mr Ogle said: "A quick answer to that is no, not really. We don't have a statutory obligation to report against those adults. Some of those adults may be known to us because although they self-fund, we provide some services or put services in place for them.

"But from the wider cohort, no. Actually, it's a bit of a national challenge to get a good handle on what the self-funding wider market looks like from a wider home care or residential perspective.

"It's something I know the Department of Health and Social Care is looking at – in particular with providers and provider returns – so that we can get a better idea of that cohort because at the moment, it is a pressure in itself with the cost of care. We're seeing more self-funders come to us with depleted funds."

Cllr Adrian England (Lib Dem, Hemel Hempstead Town) said: "In relation to performance, I just want to show it has been noted what a great emphasis on prevention there is in this area of what the council does.

"It's a key thing in terms of resource efficiency and risk management, which are really what we're driving at with a sustainability agenda.

"Obviously, you also have a worsening situation in the sense of an ageing population and a growing client base. While the two are not completely analogous, there is clearly a case of what can we do to prevent work which we will otherwise have to do.

"Although I can see all the numbers are not going the way you want them to, that's life. That's an ongoing reality, and I can see how much work there is going on here to try to do that in the smartest way."