Social care needs urgent funding, survey claims

11 June 2018

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The association’s annual budget survey report welcomed recent short-term funding, which it said had helped avoid an even worse situation and made an impact on delayed transfers of care. £1.5bn from the improved Better Care fund and £1.7bn from the social care precept had ‘counter-balanced’ the £700m adult social care element of overall council savings in 2018/19.Glen Garrod

But it said that short-term protected funding needed to continue until the government’s promised green paper on care for the elderly was implemented. And then the green paper needed to be accompanied by ‘long-term adequate funding’.

‘There is an undeniable, urgent and imperative requirement on the government to act to ensure interim funding continues until the green paper is implemented, that the social care workforces receives the wages and esteem it deserves, that the care market is safeguarded, and that the long-term funding solution that social care desperately needs is finally delivered,’ said ADASS president Glen Garrod (pictured). ‘It’s time for us to deliver the secure future that so very many people in need of social care urgently need.’

According to the new report – ADASS budget survey 2018 - funding for adult social care now makes up 37.8 per cent of total council budgets. And 92 per cent of councils surveyed that increased their precepts to cover social care costs said they were doing so just to keep pace with demographic pressures.

The survey also revealed concerns about the impact of funding reductions on providers and the care market. Three quarters of councils believe that providers will experience financial difficulties over the next year, with two thirds concerned that those pressures could impact on the quality of care over that period.

Nearly 50 councils reported home care providers closing or ceasing to trade within the last six months, and 44 councils had contracts handed back by providers. Recruitment and retention also remains a concern with the social care workforce among the lowest paid in the economy.

Richard Murray, director of policy at The King’s Fund said the report was further evidence the need for a proper plan to pay for and provide social care. ‘It is essential that the forthcoming green paper sets out proposals for substantial and wide-ranging reform, including a long-term funding settlement, and that these proposals are fully aligned with the government’s long-term plan for the NHS. In the meantime, levels of unmet need are rising, the provider market is more fragile than ever and councils’ confidence in their ability to their meet their statutory duties is falling.’