Social care plans ‘will not halt bed-blocking’
Former health secretary says long-awaited reforms will fail to ease the sector’s mounting workforce crisis
‘It’s hard to see looking at these measures the NHS and social care systems being fully integrated as they should be’
‘The sector urgently requires long-term, legally binding and sustainable funding from the Government’
BORIS JOHNSON’S social care plans will barely keep local authorities afloat financially and will fail to stop elderly people blocking up hospital beds, Jeremy Hunt has claimed.
The former health secretary also said that the plans would fail to resolve the sector’s mounting workforce crisis or deliver the necessary integration between health and care services.
While acknowledging the new £86,000 lifetime cap on care costs would make a “big difference”, Mr Hunt added that it was “hard to see” the plans as anything more than “three steps forward and two steps back”.
His concerns were echoed by leading care groups and charities, which welcomed the Government’s ten-year “vision” for improving social care but said that more funding was urgently needed to pull the sector “back from the brink”.
Gillian Keegan, the care minister, published the social care white paper yesterday, setting out further details on how £5.4 billion raised through the new health and social care levy will be spent over the next three years.
As The Daily Telegraph disclosed yesterday, Ms Keegan confirmed that the Government would establish a repairs service to help older and disabled people adapt their homes to live for longer with their families or independently.
They will also get more money to enable adaptations such as stairlifts, wet rooms and home technologies.
In the longer term, the white paper says greater focus will be put on encouraging elderly people to downsize.
At least £300million will be invested to boost the range of supported housing and £150million to drive greater adoption of technology to support independent living and improved care.
A previously announced £500million will go towards ensuring the social care workforce has the right training and qualifications and feels valued.
Critics said the proposals failed to offer detailed plans for integrating health and social care services, which will be dealt with in a future white paper.
The document also fails to set out extra funding to improve pay and conditions for the sector’s 1.54 million workers, despite industry leaders warning of a recruitment and retention crisis.
Vacancies in social care are expected to hit 105,000 this winter, with more than 42,000 people leaving over the past six months, leading to soaring waiting lists and care needs going unmet.
Mr Hunt told MPS that the investment outlined was a “long way off ” the £7billion a year in extra spending the Commons health committee had called for, adding that it “barely” gave councils “enough to deal with demographic change and the national living wage increases”.
“It’s hard to see looking at these measures the NHS and social care systems being fully integrated as they should be and it’s very hard to see an end to the workforce crisis, which sees 40 per cent turnover in many companies.”
He added that without further measures and investment “we will continue to see hospital wards full of people who should be discharged and older people not getting the care they need because the carers do not exist”.
Robert Jenrick, the former communities secretary, said only 15 per cent of the extra revenue “is going to flow through to local authorities to improve the quantity and quality of care”.
The white paper included plans to increase the prestige of a career in care, with the rollout of a “care certificate” to create a care delivery standard recognised across the sector.
It also recognised the “immense sacrifice” made throughout the pandemic by the social care workforce. Some of the funding would be used to “kickstart a focus on wellbeing” with an offer of counselling, a bespoke support helpline and mental health training.
Dr Sanjeev Kanoria, founder and chairman of Advinia Health Care, one of the biggest care providers in the UK, said: “This is yet another example of kicking the can down the road. The sector urgently requires long-term, legally binding and sustainable funding from the Government as it has made with its spending commitments to the NHS.”