News

Extra funding would help councils build on the effective prevention work to tackle loneliness which has saved millions of pounds and cut emergency hospital stays.

Providers of adult social care services may face more than £6.6 billion in extra costs due to the coronavirus crisis by the end of September this year, stark new analysis commissioned by councils and social care directors reveals.

Cllr Izzi Seccombe, Chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board responds to an Institute for Fiscal Studies report on council spending on adult social care.

Vital public health services such as drug and alcohol treatment, early years and school aged support, weight management and sexual health services need urgent investment in the Spending Review if the country is to fully recover from the effects of the pandemic, councils say today.

Cllr Izzi Seccombe, Chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, responds to today’s 70th anniversary of the NHS.

The LGA said the Government and NHS must utilise the knowledge and experience of directors of public health when it comes to distributing a potential COVID-19 vaccine.

“This tragic milestone is a heartbreaking reminder of how many people have lost their lives to this dreadful disease and the terrible toll it has placed on family and friends.”

The report, based on 22 effective HWBs across the country, shows the boards are driving health and social care integration and making sure that prevention is at the heart of this - helping to keep people well in the first place, rather than managing ill health better.

"All of us in local government, across the political divide, want to see the Queen’s Speech finally set out the plans we have been waiting for and make good on the Prime Minister’s promise to ‘fix social care’, once and for all."

Councils across the country continue to lead the local fight against the pandemic. However, the Government’s Contain Outbreak Management Fund is set to end in March 2022, which poses a threat to councils' ability to ramp-up efforts in response to the Omicron variant.