'Emergency' government funding of £1 billion should be provided to councils in their 2017/18 budgets to help stave off an impending social care crisis in the short term, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) is urging.
This vital funding, distributed on a needs based formula, would immediately help to address the shortfall in next year’s budgets and stabilise the sufficiency and quality of the care market, which is at increasing risk of collapse.
The worrying fragility of the care market is reflected by an ADASS survey showing that nearly two-thirds (62%) of councils have had residential and nursing home closures, and more than half (57%) have had care providers hand back contracts.
With no new money announced for social care so far, and more than 97 per cent of directors saying measures in the Local Government Finance Settlement would make either very little or no difference to funding pressures, ADASS is warning that councils will fail to meet their statutory duties without significant and immediate funding.
Councils are projecting a combined overspend on adult social care for 2016/17 of around £441 million, a huge rise on the £168 million in 2015/16. With the Better Care Fund backloaded until the end of the decade, funding will come too late to help nearly two million people who rely on care and support.
In its submission to the Budget 2017, ADASS is calling on Government to address shorter-term concerns, including:
immediately assist the shortfall in next year’s budgets by injecting £1 billion in order to stabilise the sufficiency and quality of the market
make provision for the gap in funding to 2020, ensuring that social care funding is protected, transparent and sustainable
help with the recruitment and retention of care staff and social workers, including training, and help co-ordinate a national recruitment campaign.
Margaret Willcox, president elect of ADASS, says: “It is imperative that social care is treated as a national priority because current solutions go nowhere near what is needed to meet the increased needs for, and costs of, care for older and disabled people.
“A cumulative total of £5.5 billion has been cut from council social care budgets by the end of this financial year. If the huge projected council overspends of £441 million cannot be funded from savings in other council services or from reserves, even greater reductions in social care services will follow in the next few months and many councils risk failing to meet their statutory duties.
“Emergency assistance of £1 billion – which is at least what all leading sector experts say is needed to fund adult social care next year – and distributed on a needs based formula, will prevent further deterioration whilst working on a longer term solution, and would go some way towards stabilising the system for councils, providers and the NHS.
“Unless this funding is forthcoming, we will continue to see more older and disabled people not getting the care and support they rely upon to survive each day, an even greater toll being placed on those 6.5 million family members and other carers, increasing delays in the NHS, and even more care homes closing and growing gaps and failures in the care market.
“We are keen to work with government and the sector to identify a solution to funding sustainable social care in the longer term, which will need to be debated with the public and look at the full range of funding sources and how they may be fairly distributed in future.”
