The Local Government Association (LGA) and NHS Confederation are calling on Chancellor Rishi Sunak to use the Spending Review to provide genuinely new money for social care to help tackle the NHS backlog.
Social care pressures make it harder to tackle the serious backlog of cases needing to be dealt with by the NHS due to the ongoing impact of the pandemic, where beds are still occupied by people who are medically fit to be discharged but do not have care arrangements in place for their return, they said.
In a statement, the organisations claimed recent government funding announcements to help clear the NHS backlog for people waiting for tests and scans and on care workforce retention and recruitment will be useful, but are “not enough to meet the immediate pressures facing social care now, and do nothing to address the core issue of care worker pay”.
Both organisations say that the Spending Review must inject “urgently-needed new national funding to address severe and mounting pressures that are resulting in growing unmet and under-met need” and greater strain on the care workforce.
Further increases in council tax and the social care precept to pay for these immediate pressures also cannot be relied upon further, as this raises varying amounts in different parts of the country, unrelated to need, they added.
The Spending Review needs to provide sustainable funding to help councils and providers plan with confidence over the longer term, as opposed to “one-off, time-limited injections of funding”.
“It is clear that our health and care system faces a hugely difficult winter ahead. Councils will continue to work hard with the local NHS amid unprecedented funding pressures to try and help people live independently and reduce demand on the health service,” said LGA Community Wellbeing Board chairman Cllr. David Fothergill.
“Immediate extra funding is needed in the Spending Review to help avoid a situation where people spend longer in hospital, rather than in their own home and communities – or having their operations cancelled more regularly - as NHS pressures become unsustainable this winter and councils are left increasingly powerless to help,” he added.
NHS Confederation director of policy Dr. Layla McCay (pictured) said: “New short-term funding which addresses the present crisis is urgently needed ahead of what will be a perilous winter, but we also need long term funding to radically improve services and improve the recruitment and retention of social care staff.”
