25 March 2005
No long-term funding for social care services will be allocated until reform is finalised, the minister in charge said this week.
Speaking after the publication of the long-awaited green paper on adult social care, Stephen Ladyman said he was fully aware that funding issues needed to be discussed and debated.
But, he added: 'First we need to pinpoint what social care will look like before we can do comprehensive costings. We need to stop thinking about how much money we put in and start thinking about how we deliver services better.'
Speaking on March 22 at a meeting hosted by health think-tank the King's Fund, Ladyman said that the numbers requiring social care services were expected to quadruple by 2050, but that the government could not afford to increase resources by a similar amount.
Former NatWest chief executive Sir Derek Wanless recently embarked on a review of the long-term costs of social care, a study that is backed by the King's Fund but is missing central government support.
Ladyman urged managers and carers to grasp the opportunity presented by the green paper to reform fundamentally the design and delivery of social services.
'You have this four-month consultation period to change the world and, more importantly, to change the world of people you care for. If your voice isn't heard in these four months, it won't be heard for another generation,' he said.
Independence, well-being and choice, the green paper on adult social care, was published on March 21 and sets out a long-term vision for the future of services.
Individual budgets will give users the power to buy in services they want and need, be they conventional care or activities, such as family holidays, that can contribute to a sense of wellbeing.
The paper also proposes to strengthen preventative action, reducing emergency admissions to hospital as well as developing responsive models of care, such as assisted housing, that make the best use of technology.
Each local authority would appoint a director of adult services to take strategic responsibility for housing and education as well as social care.
Julie Jones, vice-president of the Association of Directors of Social Services, said the paper laid the foundations for a modernised social care system and admitted that there were areas where social services needed to improve.
PFmar2005
