Cllr Izzi Seccombe, Chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, responds to a survey published today by the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group, which reveals that nearly 70 per cent of the disability care sector is threatened by the liability for sleep-in costs paid to carers.
The findings of this survey are extremely worrying, if not unexpected.
“The continued absence of new funding to cover historic, current and future sleep-in payments, remains a huge financial risk to social care providers and councils, and is causing continuing uncertainty in the market and widespread anxiety for carers and those who use care services.
“We fully support care workers being paid fairly for the work they do and we urge government to fund the cost of sleep-in payments with genuinely new money, to prevent more care providers going out of business, contracts being handed back to councils, care workers losing their jobs and less investment in prevention.
“Without this it will put further strain on informal carers and impact on the wellbeing and outcomes of those who rely on social care, which will reduce the ability of social care to mitigate demand pressures on the NHS.
“The extra funding for adult social care in the 2017 Spring Budget was not announced with sleep-in costs in mind and is not enough to deal with all immediate and short-term pressures. Even after additional funding, the social care funding gap is set to exceed £2 billion by 2020.
“Adult social care is at a tipping point. Genuinely new funding is vital to help providers, personal budget holders and self-funders meet all funding pressures relating to sleep-ins.”