By Richard Johnstone | 1 July 2013
The proposed national eligibility threshold for social care is to be based on the current ‘substantial’ need level used by councils, care minister Norman Lamb has announced.
A new minimum level of support is being introduced to remove the variation in access to care across England, as part of moves to cap individuals' lifetime contribution to their care costs at £72,000 from 2016.
Lamb said that setting the threshold at the baseline currently used by most authorities for eligibility would ‘let councils keep current levels of access to care and support services’. The national provision will be introduced by the Care Bill currently before Parliament, and is set to be in place a year before the cap in 2015.
The reform would put an end to councils tightening their own local eligibility criteria in response to budget pressures, Lamb added.
The vast majority of the upper-tier councils that are responsible for adult social care limit services to those with ‘substantial’ care needs. Only three restrict services to those with critical needs, according to latest figures.
However, a number of councils have considered possible changes following government cuts to their funding. Birmingham City Council planned to increase its threshold to ‘critical’ but this was struck down at the High Court in May 2011.
Lamb said such cases left people living ‘with the fear that they will be denied or lose their support’.
He added that the national threshold would also remove the confusion many people experience when first entering the care system. It would also tackle variations that can lead to inconsistencies and legal challenges.
He said: 'In my view, we need to be clear about the basic minimum entitlements to services so that everyone can be reassured there is some level of support they can expect, regardless of where they live.
‘A national minimum is exactly that – a starting point for local councils to base their care provision on.’
Guidance published for consultation on Friday also called on councils to explore how they can best make use of the £3.8bn of pooled funding to be shared with the NHS from 2015/16. The move to better integrate money spent in both health and social care was announced by Chancellor George Osborne in last week’s Spending Review.
