Social care spending shrinks by £2bn

13 Jun 12
England’s adult social care budget will have been reduced by almost £2bn over the two years to March 2013, according to a survey by the Association of Directors of Social Services.
By Vivienne Russell | 14 June 2012

England’s adult social care budget will have been reduced by almost £2bn over the two years to March 2013, according to a survey by the Association of Directors of Social Services.
Old person

Credit: Berna Namoglu / Shutterstock

The reduction comes as the number of older and disabled adults continues to grow at 3% per year, Adass said

The cuts are made up of £890m this year and £1bn last year. But only 12.7% of the cuts have been achieved through reducing services, Adass said. The majority of savings – over 85% – were secured through service redesign or efficiency and the remainder by increasing charges.

Adass president Sarah Pickup said: ‘The latest survey shows that councils continue to strive to protect frontline services through redesigning services to focus on prevention and recovery and reducing ongoing costs, and by reviewing processes, services and contracts to ensure value for money.

‘Yet despite this and the use of transferred resources from the NHS to protect services and fund rising demographic pressures, some councils have had to resort to reductions in services to balance their budgets. We are particularly concerned at the impact this might have on preventative and voluntary sector services.’

The survey, which achieved a near 100% response rate, revealed a planned average increase of 0.9% in fees. Six councils changed their Fair Access to Care Services criteria from ‘moderate’ to ‘substantial’. There are now 83% of councils with this stricter criteria compared with 78% in 2011/12.

The NHS has this year invested £622m in social care, with 40% (£244m) of this being used to offset pressure and cuts to services.

Pickup warned that in the absence of a sustainable funding system, there was a real risk that access to care services would have to be restricted.

‘This challenge will not go away if it is once again kicked into the long grass. No one expects an immediate and complete solution. But putting in place the architecture of a new funding system and looking at how we can shift the balance of current public spending to easy pressure in the sector is work that needs to start immediately.’

Commenting on the survey, Richard Humphries, senior fellow at the King’s Fund, said it highlighted an ‘impending crisis’ in social care. Using NHS resources to prop up social care was not a solution, he added.

‘This survey reinforces the need to move much more quickly to achieve closer integration between health and social care and deliver a long-term funding settlement for social care based on the proposals set out by the Dilnot Commission,’ Humphries said.

‘If ministers do not keep their promise to produce a blueprint for action this side of the summer recess, they will be failing the current and future generations of older and disabled people and storing up problems for the NHS.’

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