About Richmond Upon Thames

Our vision is: 'To make Richmond upon Thames the greenest, safest and best educated borough in London and be an exemplar borough on sustainability.'

The core values that underpin the Council's conduct and work are:

Aspire - we will deliver excellence, meeting the needs of customers.
Innovate - we will find new and better ways of delivering good value services.
Take responsibility - we will make timely, sound decisions, and take responsibility for them.
Be clear, honest and open - we will be straight talking and say what we mean without jargon.
Be inclusive - we will work effectively with stakeholders and partners, co operating with and supporting others to achieve results.

Some facts about Richmond upon Thames:

The borough population is 186,300.
Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) residents comprise 9% of the total population, but 16% of those aged 19 or less.
The proportion of 0-4 year olds, 25-40 year olds and people aged 85 and over is higher than the national average.
Richmond upon Thames is the third lowest funded council per head of population nationally.
Richmond upon Thames is one of the London's safest boroughs.

Some facts about Social Services for Adults:

The net budget is £72m.
There are 5,000 service users.
The borough are the furthest forward introducing Personal Budgets.
Currently there are 200 service users on Personal Budget plans. It is anticipated by 2009, all service users will be on a Personal Budget.
The directorate has responsibility for Adult social care, community, corporate policy, strategy, community services operations.

The Council has achieved significant success in many key services, including Adult Social Services. In particular, we have increased the number of people receiving direct payments to pay for their own care and increased the number of people supported in their own homes rather than residential or nursing homes.

Our recently integrated Health and Social Care community services are , enabling further improvements in service quality and efficiency for services users and their carers, through more 'joined-up' working arrangements. We will continue to promote and actively encourage partnership working in a number of areas.

Adult Social Services Aim is to 'Improve the range and quality of local care services and ensure that these services are increasingly subject to service user choice and control. We will reduce homelessness and provide more affordable local housing and supported living options.'