Adult social care must be treated as a national priority. It is a vital public service that supports people with physical and learning disabilities, those with mental health issues and older people and their carers to live their lives in the way they want.
Key messages
- Adult social care must be treated as a national priority. It is a vital public service that supports people with physical and learning disabilities, those with mental health issues and older people and their carers to live their lives in the way they want.
- The consequences of long term underfunding means we face an ever more fragile provider market, growing unmet and under-met need, further strain on informal carers, less investment in prevention, continued pressure on an already overstretched care workforce, and a decreased ability of social care to help mitigate demand pressures on the NHS.
- The extra money for social care announced in the Spring Budget was a step in the right direction, but it is only one-off funding which reduces each year and stops at the end of 2019/20. It is not a long-term solution. Even with £1 billion new funding this year (the first year of the Spring Budget £2 billion allocation over three years) adult social care still faces a funding gap of £1.1 billion in 2017/18.
- We estimate that the gap facing adult social care by 2020, including the pre-existing pressure on provider market stability, is £2.3 billion. This is why it is so important for the Government to use this year’s Autumn Budget to take immediate action to address the adult social care crisis. We need the planned consultation to build a sustainable system for the future.
- In dealing with the pressures facing social care and health in the short and long-term, the Government must develop a balanced approach that does not give one part of the system primacy over the other. It is imperative that the Government urgently brings forward its consultation on how it will tackle the social care funding crisis.
- Councils are doing all they can to try and help people live independently in their communities and reduce demand on hospitals. Leaders in local government and the NHS, both at national and local level, need to work together to make sure we make the best use of our resources. Delayed transfers of care are a symptom of wider challenges within the health and care system. These problems will not be solved by focusing on them to the exclusion of other factors such as better care pathways, more effective action in hospitals and community-based support to keep people out of hospital in the first place.
Download the full briefing
Social care, Opposition Day Debate, House of Commons, Wednesday 25 October 2017