Risk good social care only available to wealthy – sector react to Spending Review

The social care sector has reacted to George Osborne’s Autumn Statement and Spending Review. Here is our round-up from key commentators.

ADASS President Ray James said: “Although the Treasury’s recognition of the untenable position of social care budgets is very welcome, Ministers must know that the proposals do not deliver sufficient funding to meet the growing number of older and disabled people requiring increasingly complex care and support and the Chancellor’s welcome announcement of the living wage. Perhaps inevitably at this stage, there are many more questions.

“The Council Tax precept will raise least money in areas of greatest need which risks heightening inequality. Councils in deprived areas will have greatest social care needs, yet they will raise less than 1/3rd of what more affluent areas do through this approach.”
 
He went on: “We don’t believe that the funding for the next couple of years will anywhere near meet the costs of the national living wage and the increasing demand for social care (we are bound to ask what happened to the £6billion saved by deferring the Dilnot reforms). Adult social care is already struggling. Last week we ran a poll of directors. 76% of adult social care budgets are currently overspent by a total of £340million already this year, before the greatest demands of winter months.

“The NHS and social care are completely interdependent and without adequate social care funding inevitably more people will be admitted to hospital and there will be delays in helping them home safely.”

Julia Unwin, Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said: “While allowing up to £2 billion more for social care will help to ease the funding shortfall in some regions, choosing to do this through Council Tax will risk creating a two-tier system where good care is only available in wealthier areas or to those who can pay for it.

UK Home Care Assocaition (UKHCA) Policy Director Colin Angel said: “Even if all councils increased council tax by 2%, it would raise less than £500m next year. In the homecare sector alone a £753m deficit is predicted for 2016-17.”

Dot Gibson, general secretary of the National Pensioners Convention, said: “The social care system has suffered £4.6 billion worth of cuts since 2010, and the Chancellor’s plan to allow local councils to raise additional spending will be nowhere near enough to address the problem.

“Already over one million older people no longer get the help they need at home, staff turnover is high, the quality of care is sometimes questionable and there is a distinct lack of dignity in the system for both staff and residents.”

John Appleby, Chief Economist at The King’s Fund, said: “We welcome the drive to fully integrate health and social care by 2020 and the additional funding for social care that will be provided through the Better Care Fund from 2017. New powers to increase Council Tax will also provide some financial flexibility for councils but will not raise enough to close the social care funding gap and will disadvantage deprived areas with the highest needs for publicly funded care. While these measures provide some recognition of the pressures facing social care, they are not a substitute for sustainable funding.

UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis (pictured) said: “It was a bad day for local government. The Chancellor grabbed another £1.9bn from council budgets, at a time when they needed more money, not less. The day is not far off when councils can only afford to run the services the law demands they do. Other services will either disappear or residents will have to pay much more to use them.

“Our social care system is already in meltdown. It needed a desperate injection of cash today, but all that happened was George Osborne passed the buck to local taxpayers. Forcing local councils to raise council taxes locally to put more cash in social care will create a postcode lottery, where more deprived areas have less to spend than wealthier ones.

Care England Chief Executive Prof Martin Green said: “There is a real and immediate crisis in social care with many organisations facing an uncertain future. The extra money that was announced today in the Chancellor’s Comprehensive Spending Review will not deliver enough money, and it will certainly not be in time to avert a crisis in some care services.

There is no guarantee that every local authority will increase the council tax by 2% and even if this does happen, it will not provide a consistent approach to funding care.”

“The Chancellor has increased funding to the Better Care Fund, but there is little evidence from the way in which the Better Care Fund has been operating to date that this money has gone to the front line. Care England would like a review of the Better Care Fund to ensure that in future the £1.5 billion that the Chancellor has announced goes directly into front-line care.”

Andy Bell, chair of the Mental Health Policy Group, a coalition of leading mental health organisations, said: “The Chancellor’s decision to highlight mental health in the Spending Review today is welcome. While the announcement of additional funding for mental health services is a good start, it is vital that we see more investment in mental health from NHS England going forward if we are to achieve the turnaround we so desperately need. We hope that NHS England will follow the Chancellor’s lead in responding to the recommendations of the Mental Health Taskforce early next year, to ensure that the funding translates to real change and focused investment on the ground.

“There are, however, sizeable question marks around many of the wider issues facing people with mental health problems. We are particularly concerned about potential cuts to public health budgets in this parliament and continued pressures on social care and housing, which all have the potential to have a major impact on people with mental health problems and their families. We are simply not investing enough in preventing mental health problems in the first place, leaving people to become more unwell and in need of more long-term and costly treatment.”