THE number of people requesting support from the council’s adult social care team has fallen by 12 per cent in the past year.

New figures released by Cheshire West and Chester Council show that in 2017-18 it received 6,292 new requests for support, compared to 7,176 in 2016-17.

At a scrutiny committee meeting on Monday, Jennifer McGovern, director of integrated health and social care at CWAC, suggested the drop could be due to more residents accessing alternative forms of support from the community.

She said: “We are doing a considerable amount of work to divert people from services so they can access something locally, and maybe access equipment without even having to come into services at all.

“I think what we are beginning to see is the impact of that approach and things like the carer service that we’ve commissioned, so that people are finding a lot more in the community to help support them before they need to come to services.

“But that’s something we are tracking very closely because it’s really important that we continue to develop our offer to people who are either supporting their relatives or need the support themselves.”

Of the new requests for support in 2017-18, 36 per cent of applicants were not provided by services from CWAC’s adult social care team.

Almost half of adults aged 18 to 64 that went on to receive support had a learning disability as their ‘primary support need’, while 59 per cent of people aged 65 and over that received support needed it for personal care.

Meanwhile, the number of social care reassessments has soared over the past year – from 3,061 in 2016-17 to 4,286 in 2017-18.

Forty-four per cent of those reassessments were unplanned – which means they were responding to a crisis or unexpected event in most cases.