Day care centres could have fully re-opened in Powys – if the demand was there, a senior social services officer has said.

At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Health and Care Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday, April 16, councillors were given a presentation on the council’s shift toward “day opportunities” for adults with care and support needs, as well as for older people.

The service reorganisation marks a move away from the traditional day care centre model, which was shut down at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and began reopening in phases from August 2022.

According to the council, the new approach focuses on “community inclusion, increasing independence, and supporting people to live their lives, their way.”

Head of adult social services Sharon Frewin said: “It’s worth noting that since COVID-19 we’ve seen dwindling numbers of people attending day services and people choosing to do different things.

“A lot more people want to do individual activities or small groups of people and focussing on social and leisure, activities.

“Most of the time they use the day service bases (centres) as just that, where they come in the morning and the majority of the time go back out into the community to access activities.”

Powys Independent Cllr Gareth E Jones pointed to the data in the report on day care centre use and said: “If my sums are correct, there’s been a drop in a third of the numbers accessing the service and there’s also been a 30 per cent drop in the number of days available.”

Cllr Glyn Preston (Liberal Democrat) said: “It’s not a uniform trend across all the sites; some have seen a drop of three or four (people). I think it’s difficult to describe that as dwindling.”

With the council’s “ability to signpost people” towards services about to increase, Cllr Preston said: “We might actually have an increase in the number of people who are accessing our services, and do we have the capacity to deal with that?”

Social care delivery senior manager Hazel Jukes said: “Pre-COVID-19 they (day centres) were run five days a week with varying numbers across the county.

“Post-COVID-19 we have opened with offers to be full-time in all services.

“We haven’t had the referrals to do that, so the days are set on the number of people we have had referrals for.

“We are business as usual, if we had extra referrals we would re-open the extra days.”

She said discussions had taken place with social workers to explain what facilities are available at the day care centres.

Her team, she added, has records of those who attended before and after the Covid-19 pandemic, and has “tracked” all individuals who have not returned to the service.

Committee chairwoman Cllr Amanda Jenner (Conservative) asked if there was any explanation as to “why” people had moved away from using day care centre based services.

Ms Jukes said: “It’s a difficult one to answer, it’s a different cohort of people with different expectations, and the feedback is that people were not looking to go to a day care centre.”

Recommendations from the committee will be added to the report before it goes to a meeting of the Liberal Democrat/Labour cabinet for a decision and the changes are expected to be in place this autumn.

The report shows:

Pre-Covid-19 – there were 322 people accessing day care centre based services

Of the 14 day care centres, 12 were open five days a week, one was open for four days and one for three days a week.

Post-Covid-19 – there are 213 people accessing day care centre based services.

Of the 14 centres, seven are open five days a week, one is open four days a week, two are open three days a week, two are open one day a week and two are closed