Adult social care spend rises by 5%

The amount of money councils spent on providing adult social care rose by 5% in cash terms in 2008-09, Department of Health statistics have revealed.

The £16.1bn figure compares with the previous year’s £15.3bn expenditure, with 1.78 million people receiving some services in England.

Despite the ageing population, however, the amount of money councils spent on nursing care actually declined by 5% in cash terms to £1.4bn. Residential care spending for those with less intensive needs increased by 3% to £7.6bn.

Spending on day care and domiciliary care rose by 10% in cash terms to £6.5bn, suggesting more efforts to keep people out of care homes. That trend was corroborated by councils providing more than 200 million hours of home care services, a 6% increase on 2007-08.

Proportionately, the biggest single area of increased spending was on learning disabilities, where spending rose by 10% in cash terms from £3.5bn to £3.8bn.

Richard Humphries, social care fellow at the King’s Fund, said the fact that the report noted only a “slight increase” in service users in the face of a rapidly ageing population indicated that levels of unmet need in communities were probably rising.

“That the number of people being helped has barely increased seems to fly in the face of demography and reflects the sustained pressures councils are experiencing in achieving more with less,” he said.

“A significant reduction in nursing home use … may reflect growing investment in re-ablement and other alternative approaches.”

Andrew Cozens, strategic adviser for children, adults and health services at the Improvement & Development Agency, said that increases in spending on people with learning difficulties was likely to continue.

“It’s also surprising to see residential care increasing, but that may be something to do with learning difficulties’ spending, rather than a failure to keep people living independently,” he said.

John Jackson, joint chair of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services  resources committee agreed the statistics underlined that the sector was not just dealing with the effects of the ageing population, but also with younger people, particularly adults with learning difficulties.

 “We know that there’s more demand for adult social care due to demographic trends, and our response to that is that we’d like to see more of those people supported in the community,” he said.

“The spending on non-residential care suggests that’s happening.”

However, he said the reduction in nursing care spending went against  expectations in light of the use of such services by dementia sufferers.

In percentage terms, spending on social services for asylum seekers increased the most, at 28%, but a change in accounting procedures was likely to be the reason for the rise.