Jenny Owen calls for new UK care funding system

A new funding system that spells out clearly what patients get for free and what they pay for in health and social care must be created after the general election, the president of the organisation that represents social services directors said on Thursday.

Jenny Owen, president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Service, warned Labour and Conservative politicians that their recent piecemeal proposals – for free personal care at home from Labour and for an insurance scheme to cover care home fees from the Conservatives – risk “seriously destabilising an already fragile health and social care system, or of creating perverse incentives”.

At present most NHS care is free at the point of use and most social care is means-tested.

But “political leaders from all parties need to recognise that the costs of caring for people in their own homes, and in residential homes, as well as in hospital, all need to be seen as a single, indivisible, whole”, she said. That meant a fresh look at how health and social care are funded.

Ms Owen continued: “After the election we need cross-party support setting out a real understanding of what citizens can expect from the whole health and social care system in the future – whether you have acute conditions like cancer or long term conditions like dementia: what you are entitled to for free, and what you pay for.”

The issue would not be solved overnight, she said. But it “cannot be kicked into the long grass”.

The current situation, with social services facing budget cuts of perhaps 20 per cent over the next three years, was stark, she said. With a growing gap between rising demand and available funding, “we have a burning platform”.

She noted that the government’s current green paper on social care funding ruled out tax funding of social care – an approach that could solve the problem. But none of its other proposals would successfully address the unfairness that saw people with some long term conditions, such as dementia, pay for care when others with very similar needs received virtually all their care free from the NHS.