Tory plans to shake-up social care have been stripped of more than £1billion and hit by delays, a watchdog warned today.
The Government’s “ambitious” blueprint faces “significant risks”, the National Audit Office ruled in the latest blow to the crisis-hit sector, which needs 152,000 extra workers. Publishing its latest report, the spending watchdog said: “Two years into its 10-year plan to overhaul adult social care, Government has delayed its plans to cap lifetime care costs that a person pays and scaled back plans for reforming the system it set out in December 2021 and, despite progress in some areas, is behind schedule even on its revised plans.”
It added: “More than a billion pounds of the £1.7bn committed to reforming the adult social care system in December 2021 has been diverted to other care priorities.” The auditor said “only £729million may now be spent between 2022 and 2025 on reforming the adult social care system - representing a 58% fall in the budget”.
Dennis Reed, director of the Silver Voices campaign group, said it was “hardly surprising that so many older people are filling hospital beds unnecessarily, when local authorities have no funds to provide social care support so that they can live with dignity in their own homes”. He added: “This NAO report is a damning indictment of the failure of the Conservatives to get to grips with the social care crisis - they even shelved the modest reforms they had announced.”
Age UK charity director Caroline Abrahams said: “With inflation continuing to raise the cost of delivering care, the last thing we needed was for more than a billion pounds of the Government money that had been earmarked to support care reform being spirited away. That extra cash was sorely needed and without it councils can do little more than firefight as they try to meet soaring levels of need with totally inadequate resources.
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“The political will for care reform that Boris Johnson briefly offered as PM turned out to be illusory and under his successors the opportunity to make life better for everyone who needs social care - and all those who work so hard to provide it - has been allowed largely to shrink away. What's left of the Government's care reform programme now is still of some value but it's hard to see it doing more than forming a foundation on which the next government can build.”
Last year, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt confirmed that social care charging reforms which had been promised by Boris Johnson would be delayed for two years to 2025, including an £86,000 cap on the amount people would pay for their own care. Mean testing would also become more generous.
Today’s report urged the Department of Health and Social Care to assess the impact of its planned shake-up on town halls and set out how it plans to fund the overhaul. The NAO said that to bring in the costs pledge by October 2025, "work will need to begin soon and will increase workload for DHSC and local government staff, alongside the system reforms underway".
NAO boss Gareth Davies said: "Adult social care reform has been an intractable political challenge for decades. Government has set out its ambition to meet this challenge and now needs to demonstrate how it is delivering on these plans. If government is to successfully reform adult social care, it will need to manage some significant risks, including its own capacity and that of local government to resume charging reform activity alongside system reform.”
Commons Public Accounts Committee chairwoman Meg Hillier said the report showed the department "still has a long way to go" in its 10-year plan. She added: "It has made some progress but that has largely stalled, with charging reform delayed and wider improvements scaled back. The sector is still struggling with long waiting lists, staffing shortages and both local authorities and providers under significant financial pressure.”
Local Government Association community wellbeing board chairman David Fothergill warned: "Adult social care remains in a precarious position, with overstretched budgets, significant unmet and under met need, and remaining instability within the provider market."
A DHSC spokesman said: “We remain committed to reform, and are investing up to £700m over this year and next to make major improvements to the adult social care system. This includes £42.6m to support innovation in care and increasing the Disabled Facilities Grant by £50m. Additionally, we have made up to £8.1bn available to help local authorities tackle waiting lists, low fee rates and workforce pressures - £570m of which will help local authorities improve adult social care provision, in particular by boosting the workforce." The Mirror is campaigning for Fair Care for All.
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