Plan for social care contains too little detail

THE Government’s social care plan provides no extra funding for frontline social care and will do nothing to immediately help the millions of people who draw on and work in care and support, or will do so in the near future, councils warn.

In a detailed briefing on the Government’s plan, the Local Government Association, which represents councils, says the plan contains far too little detail and no action at all on several crucial issues which need to be resolved and that the NHS cannot be fixed without also fixing social care.

The LGA says the Government’s apparent reliance on council tax, the adult social care precept and long-term efficiencies to meet core costs is deeply troubling.

Council tax raises different amounts in different parts of the country, unrelated to need, while social care has already had to meet a £6.1bn funding gap over the past decade through savings and diverting money from other council services, cutting them faster than they otherwise would have been.

Instead, the LGA said the Spending Review needs to provide an urgent cash injection of genuinely new funding to tackle the huge pressures facing the care system now, including on staff pay to help address recruitment and retention, which has been severely stretched to breaking point by the pandemic.

Of the estimated £36bn the new Uk-wide health and social levy will raise over three years, only £5.4bn is to be ringfenced for social care in England. Unlike for the NHS, none of this money appears to be allocated to help tackle the significant pressures facing social care now.

The LGA says that addressing the NHS backlog and freeing up hospital beds cannot be done without also fixing social care, which will require additional support for those discharged in the community.

Councils say the lack of any itemised breakdown of how this share of the levy will be used for social care is creating concern, while urgent clarity is also needed on how much will go to adult social care beyond the three-year period and an absolute guarantee that this will be delivered.

Funding the plan’s cap on care costs and increased financial means tests thresholds will absorb a substantial part of the £5.4bn and the costs of this financial reform will continue to rise into the next Spending Review period.

Councils are concerned that this will leave little or nothing to pay for other desperately needed reforms such as investing in prevention, care worker pay, quality, access, innovation and new models of care, and meeting unmet and under-met need.

Local Government Association.