The commissioning and provision of adult social care and support is a vital council service that can transform people’s lives. It is a crucial public service that supports working age disabled adults, older people and their carers, as well as promotes their wellbeing and independence.
Key messages
- Adult social care should be given parity with the health service. Adult social care is vital in its own right and there cannot be a sustainable NHS without a sustainable adult social care system.
- The funding that this Government has made available to adult social care to date is welcome. Despite this new money, adult social care faces a funding gap of £2.2 billion by 2020. This must be addressed as an urgent priority. This figure does not include funding needed to back-pay sleep-in carers the national minimum wage for the past six years.
- The forthcoming Green Paper is an important opportunity to try and secure a sustainable funding solution for the long-term. To avoid the risk of it suffering the fate of previous attempts at funding reform, there must be cross-party consensus on the way forward.
- Our recognition of the need to achieve consensus on this agenda is shared by national politicians. A recent ComRes poll commissioned by the LGA found that the vast majority of parliamentarians (84 per cent of MPs and 81 per cent of Peers) agree that additional funding should go to councils’ social care budgets to tackle the funding crisis. Further to this, more than 90 MPs from across the political divide wrote to the Government calling for a non-partisan debate to deliver a sustainable settlement. We are seeking talks with key figures from this group of MPs.
- The delayed transfer of care (DTOC) reduction targets, introduced by this Government, place too much emphasis on just one part of the system and risks preventing the system from working more effectively to ensure that people have the right care and support at the right time to avoid admission to hospital.