By Richard Johnstone | 11 July 2012
A decision on how long-term care is funded in England will not be taken until the next Spending Review, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley confirmed today.
Outlining the government’s response to the Dilnot Commission on social care funding, Lansley said he backed the principles underpinning the commission’s proposals. They formed the ‘right basis for any new funding model’, he said.
The commission, chaired by economist Andrew Dilnot, reported last July. It recommended a cap on an individual’s care costs of £35,000 with the state funding anything over this. Dilnot calculated that this would cost the government about £1.7bn a year.
But Lansley said today: ‘While this is the right thing to do and our intention is to base any new funding model on the principles, if a way to pay for it can be found, any proposal which includes extra public spending needs to be considered alongside other spending priorities, which of course include the demographic pressures on the social care service itself. The right place to do this is at the next Spending Review.’
A date for this has yet to be confirmed. Current spending plans run up to April 2015.
A social care white paper and a draft Care and Support Bill were also published today. The white paper included provision for a national threshold for basic care to be used by all local authorities and the ability for people to ‘port’ their care assessment between authorities. A deferred payments system would stop anyone from having to sell their home to meet care costs. Care services minister Paul Burstow said ministers would discuss with the Local Government Association how such a system could be introduced by April 2015, including how to provide the short-term funding required.
The draft Bill gives local authorities a new legal duty to maintain a register of care services. This is intended to help provide choice, and also ensure services can be maintained if a home goes out of business following the collapse of Southern Cross last year.
Burstow said £32.5m of new funding would be given to councils to set up online services that provide ‘more easily accessible information’ about local care and support options. Regulation of care homes could also be tightened to ensure ‘better oversight of the care market’, he added.
The LGA today called for ‘the current and growing funding crisis in social care’ to be addressed.
Responding to the publications, LGA chair Sir Merrick Cockell said they provided a 'good platform for a reformed social care system and there is much for councils to work on with government’. However, council leaders were disappointed the white paper ‘does not address the reality of the current and growing funding crisis in adult social care and the subsequent huge financial pressures councils face’.
He added: ‘We now need to see a viable way forward on how a social care system that provides much needed certainty, stability and is fit for purpose, can be properly funded. We are concerned that under the proposed timetable, elderly and disabled people, as well as carers, could face at least a further five years of uncertainty.’
Richard Humphries, senior fellow at the King’s Fund, said the government had ‘failed to produce a clear plan for how care should be funded or a timetable for how these decisions will be considered’.
He said: ‘There is a financial vacuum at the heart of these proposals which undermines the bold and ambitious vision for a reformed system set out in the white paper.
'It is now unlikely that action to reform care funding will be taken this side of the next general election. The consequence of indecision will see a widening gap between the care people need and what is available and mounting pressures on reducing local authority budgets will in turn compromise providers’ ability to maintain quality care.’
CIPFA welcomed the publications, but warned that the introduction of both a cap and a minimum eligibility threshold for care could hit local authority finances if extra funds were not made available.
Policy and technical director Ian Carruthers said balancing local authority budgets would become 'even more challenging' if a new regime was introduced without compensating government support.
