Social care funding in a ‘ridiculous situation’, says LGA head
I’m old enough to remember the policy concern in the 80s about the demographic timebomb. We then went on to think that technology would de-fuse it. Not so, it is increasingly with us red in tooth and claw. It also makes me reflect that in the public sector no one service exists in glorious isolation from another. In all this talk of not cutting health budgets we have neglected adult social care budgets only to find that the interplay between them means that we have been “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” This has impacted disproportionately on elderly people in rural areas. I fear worse is to come. The secret is the imaginative and complex re-design of the whole local service agenda – the re-imagining of the local authority, not plugging one leak in a sinking ship full of holes. Read on….
The head of the Local Government Association, David Sparks, has described social care funding in England and Wales as being in a “ridiculous situation” as councils are having to cut key services to fund care for the elderly.
Sparks, who runs the body that represents councils, called for an extra £1.1bn of funding for local authorities to maintain a “civilised level of care”.
He said: “Our councils are telling us that they have had to switch £900m from other services to plug the gap on elderly care. It’s basic arithmetic. If you freeze local council spending and the population is increasing all the time and the demand for services is increasing, it means other people will suffer.”