Social Care Fraud Detection

Technology could be used to detect social care fraud.

18:09 13 March 2019

Every year, the United Kingdom spends £32billion on social care – around £22billion is spent on adult social care and approximately £10billion goes to children’s social care. With ongoing cutbacks to the sector, local authorities are constantly searching for ways to cut costs. One of the solutions being explored by experts is the use of an efficient payroll system and other technologies that could not only revolutionise the process but can also detect social care fraud.

 

Currently, councils administer a huge amount of volume of care contracts, which are still done the old-fashioned way – paper timesheets are submitted and then payments are processed. Local authorities operate largely on trust that carers are carrying out these contracts in full.

 

By using the right payroll software for temporary staffing, local authorities could make the contracts much simpler and determine any irregularities. For example, if a carer is being paid for working an implausibly high number of hours per week, the system would alert authorities and trigger an investigation. Payments could also be cross-referenced with those of other local authorities, as carers may work for more than one authority or agency. The local authorities could possibly save millions or even billions of pounds every year through reduced administration costs and increased fraud detection.