THE CLIENT

The client was an adult care service provider offering residential services, day care opportunities, reablement services and supported living services. The client operated services across the South-West of England and had been subject to a number of recent mergers which increased their size significantly.

THE CHALLENGE

Following on from the recent mergers, and increased operating scale, it was recognised by the client that there were control risks present and that governance (particularly surrounding the control of cash management) required significant improvement.

Given the concerns raised, TIAA were commissioned to provide support in reviewing the cash handling systems to establish the extent of the risk, confirm any losses and to help enhance the controls and integrity over any clients’ funds. Whilst the volume of cash held did not appear to meet any materiality thresholds, the risks associated with theft, misuse or loss of vulnerable service users’ money posed significant reputational risks for the organisation and created potential safeguarding risks that needed to be effectively managed.

TARGET OUTCOME AND RESULT

The scope of the work was phased to ensure a proportionate and pragmatic approach was taken. This initially included an assessment of the robustness of the controls in place at all residential care homes and Supported Living services in order to establish the extent of the risk at each site.

Specific areas of focus included:

  • Obtaining details of what cash handling arrangements were in place at the locations, such as petty cash and clients’ personal banking or cash handling measures.
  • Consideration of clients’ personal banking arrangements, including how funds were credited to bank accounts and who had access to manage the account and withdraw funds.
  • The arrangements for drawing / receiving cash on behalf of the clients and how this was controlled within the service.
  • The controls over incurring expenditure and recording transactions.
  • The security and access arrangements within the services for holding cash.
  • The arrangements for recording and managing any items of value that were the personal property of the Clients.
  • The operation of the amenity fund accounts and any other cash balances that were held at the services (cash rent payments, petty cash accounts, household accounts, etc.).

Following on from this initial assessment, we worked with the client to develop a quality assessment programme for each of the key risk areas and scheduled a series of visit to test compliance against the assessment checklist. This included seeking to understand the reasons for any discrepancies noted during our testing, based on a 20% sample of client’s accounts. Where significant issues were identified, the sample size was extended to 100%.

There was a desire by the client to take control of the assessment programme internally so part of our work involved us working with members of the client’s Finance Team to provide training on the assessment process. This has subsequently been adopted by the client as part of a rolling quality assurance programme.

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