Cllr Izzi Seccombe, Chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, responds to an Institute for Fiscal Studies report on funding health and social care to the 2030s.
“This report lays bare the scale of the additional funding that is required to sustain care and health services over the next decade.
“If the NHS is to celebrate its 100th birthday, then it’s imperative that adult social care is not only given parity with the health service, but seen as a vital service in its own right and fully funded to future-proof it for the rising numbers of people who need care.
“The way councils are successfully using extra social care funding from the Government to meet care and support needs, support the provider market and reduce delayed transfers of care – reducing delayed days by 30 per cent since July 2017 – should incentivise government to fully fund our social care system and play its part in raising the profile of this vital service.
“Adult social care is facing a sinkhole in funding which is putting at risk provision of care for a growing number of people of all ages with care needs. Without an immediate injection of cash, even more providers will either pull out of contracts or go bust, leading to a lack of available care and a decrease in social care’s ability to help mitigate demand pressures on the NHS.
“Government needs to give urgent funding to councils to invest in prevention to reduce the need for people to be admitted to hospital in the first place, which will help to reduce costs to the public purse.
“But we cannot afford to wait for the adult social care Green Paper reforms to deliver; we need action now. As a down-payment on funding reforms, government needs to fully plug the funding gap facing adult social care, which is set to be more than £2 billion by 2020, including £1.3 billion that is needed now to stabilise the provider market.”