The prime minister has pledged to create a ‘National Care Service’ to look after elderly people, which will cost £400m a year (‘Brown’s free care pledge treated with caution’, October 1). This is to be funded two-thirds from health budgets and one-third from adult social care budgets. The latter is to be found from savings councils achieve by reducing the number of people who go into residential care, or ‘preventative services’.
At an October seminar, a speaker from the Department of Health stated that, for every £1 saved from ASC departments’ investment in preventative services, the health service would benefit by approximately 75p. When the audience was asked if they believed that the ASC received any additional benefit from health, there was a resounding silence in the room.
ASC departments are already trying to use preventative services as much as possible to offset growing demographic pressures. If we now join the above two statements together, we find that ASC has to save some £530m for health to benefit by £400m. Health then (very decently) gives £267m to ASC, leaving itself with a net gain of £133m for doing precisely nothing. Maybe I have totally misunderstood…
Steve Cross, Wokingham, Berkshire
