Vulnerable pay price for care sector’s ruin

AUTISTIC and disabled care home residents will be “denied dignity and quality of life” amid the sector’s financial ruin, according to a leaked watchdog report.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) said the sector is close to collapse after staff shortages and under-funding from the Government.

The wake of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis have seen low staff wages stagnate while care costs rise.

The report, published last month by Skills for Care, the planning body for adult social care in England, said staff vacancies rose by 52 per cent last year.

The watchdog said the vulnerable will pay the price. A leaked financial impact assessment seen by The Sunday Telegraph, commissioned by CQC Market Oversight Scheme members, said: “Inaction effectively places these consequences squarely on the shoulders of people with a learning disability and/or autism, and their families.”

The scheme began in 2015 after the Southern Cross care home chain collapsed.

Care provider chief executives said the contract handbacks will accelerate in the next 18 months. Rachael Dodgson, chief executive of Dimensions, a learning disability and autism not-forprofit, said that Dimensions and the social care workforce bear “the consequences of a broken and underfunded system”. She added: “No support provider wants to be in a position to have to hand back contracts and that this is now a reality for many speaks to the chronic lack of investment in our sector.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “Funding for health and social care services will be maintained at the same level as intended when the Health and Social Care levy was in place, including £5.4billion for adult social care.”

Deborah Ivanova, the CQC’s director for People with Learning Disability and Autistic People, said “joining up pockets of local innovation has the potential to help ease the gridlock we are currently seeing in the health and social care sector”.