Nearly 20,000 fewer older people receiving local authority funded home care

Nearly 20,000 fewer older people have been receiving local authority funded home care in the past year due to budget cuts, according to new Government figures.

Department of Health data shows two-thirds of English councils reduced funding for older people’s home care in the past year. This resulted in a drop of nearly 20,000 fewer older people receiving local authority funded domiciliary care.

This has coincided with a fall in the number of older people receiving Direct Payments for social care, from 49,315 in 2010-11 to 42,049 in 2011-12.

The home care support being reduced includes vital support services such as help to get dressed, prepare food, or wash themselves which allow older people to carry on living in their own homes while receiving the support they need to live safely and with dignity.

Age UK Charity director general, Michelle Mitchell, fears “such reductions in home care support may well result in 20,000 tragedies waiting to happen – unnecessary accidents and illnesses leading to avoidable hospital admissions and family carers cracking under the strain”.

She added: “These figures provide yet more evidence of the crisis in social care. Without decent state funded home care it is likely that increasing numbers of spouses, themselves in poor health, are shouldering physically and emotionally strenuous care without essential support.

“For those without family and friends to help a lack of state support can mean surviving without the basics in life such as help with washing, dressing, eating and living in a way that retains dignity.”

Age UK analysis of the Government’s data reveals that in102 out of 152 English local authorities there was a fall in spending on older people’s home care. This amounted to a gross total local government reduction in spending on older people’s home care of £148m between March 2011 and March 2012. Consequently there was a reduction in the number of older people who received local authority funded home care support – from 244,080 in 2010/11 to 224,745 in 2011/12 a drop of nearly 20,000 older people.

While social care services have reduced, over the last three years in England the 85 plus population, the demographic group most likely to need social care support, has risen by 57,600 people from 1,134,600 to 1,193,300. However, over the last decade, social care funding firstly stagnated and then fell, despite increasing demand from an ageing population.

Local authorities are increasingly restricting access to state funded home care due to budget cuts from central Government. In 2005 half of councils provided support to low income pensioners assessed as having moderate needs. By 2011, four fifths of councils restricted provision of care to those older people with substantial or critical needs.

At the same time as cuts to home care set in, the same data from the Department of Health shows older people are facing a drastic reduction in day care services too. Day care services are not a substitute for social care in the home but they are another form of support that older people often value and that can help, for example to mitigate loneliness and isolation or reduce pressures on carers.

Since 2009, the number of older people in England whose day care services are provided for, or arranged by their local authority has fallen by 23 per cent from 88,498 in 2009/10 to 68,160 in 2011/12.