By Vivienne Russell | 30 January 2012
There is a £500m shortfall in social care spending this year, according to Age UK.
The charity has calculated that, in order to maintain the same levels of service as in 2010, councils in England should be spending £7.8bn on social care for older people in 2011/12. However, they have only budgeted to spend £7.3bn.
Age UK’s Care in crisis 2012 report warns that this funding gap comes on top of several years of stagnating and decreasing social care spend, and against a backdrop of increasing demand for services. Since 2004, the number of people aged over 85 has risen by 250,000.
It is projecting that, by 2012/13, the government will need to spend £1bn just to stop service provision from deteriorating further.
Age UK charity director Michelle Mitchell said: ‘We need urgent government action, otherwise the [funding] gap will simply get worse.
‘We urge all parties to engage openly an constructively in the cross-party talks on care to reach a settlement on this issue that guarantees both reform of the legal structure and most importantly the funding to make it work.
‘The government must not shirk its responsibility to lead the essential reform of the social care system.’
David Rogers, chair of the Local Government Association’s wellbeing board, said Age UK’s figures highlighted what councils already know: namely, that the system needs money and will deteriorate further without major reform.
He agreed that politicians needed to put aside their differences and come up with a workable solution.
‘Politicians need to transcend political point-scoring and wake up to the ticking time bomb this country is facing. There needs to be action now to ensure the system is fairer, simpler and fit for purpose in order to truly meet the needs of the elderly and most vulnerable in our society,’ Rogers said.‘Doing nothing puts councils and government at risk of losing the public’s trust and confidence in our ability to do the best for people in later life.’
