Care in Crisis - key issues

Following the publication of the Dilnot Commission's recommendations in 2011, the Government is preparing its social care White Paper that is due to be published in early March.

Here, we outline some of the key issues of the current funding crisis in social care, plus some of our recommendations to reform the care system in the future.

A crisis in the funding of social care

• Lots of people are receiving little or no support at all.
• Of the 2 million older people in England with care-related needs, over 800,000 receive no formal support from either public or private sector agencies.
• We expect that with spending cuts from local government, this figure will rise to over one million over the next three years.
• Net spending on social care has only increased by 0.1% per year since 2004, or a total of £43 million.
• In contrast, real spending on the NHS has risen by £25 billion – 581 times as much.
• Economic projections suggest that spending on older people’s care is going to be reduced by £300 million over the next four years.

Reform is urgently needed

It is obvious from the above that social care funding needs reform urgently. We have come up with ten key points that we think the Government has to bear in mind when they’re planning reform:

1. A guarantee of sufficient quality and quantity of care for older people on low incomes 
2. A non-means-tested entitlement for everyone with care needs, regardless of their income
3. New financial products to meet the remaining costs of care for people on middle and high incomes 
4. Continuing payments to support the additional costs that disability brings on a non-means-tested basis
5. A national legal entitlement to support, in order to end the current postcode lottery
6. Adequate funding for advice, assessment and support to arrange services
7. An end to age discrimination in the provision of care and support
8. A system which supports, rather than penalises, families and carers
9. Alignment with the NHS and other local government services such as housing support
10. A flexible system which gives users control and permits different types of care services to develop

We want to see the Government commit to spending an extra £2-3 billion a year on social care from 2015 onwards. We think that for a good-quality, means-tested care system, the Government needs to spend at least 0.9% of GDP on social care by the 2020s, up from 0.5% at present.

Reforming the care system will be expensive

Reforming the care system will be expensive, and in the report we suggest a range of ways that the Government could find the money needed to invest in social care.

We think that the Government could declare that the money will be found and pay for it from general taxation, in the same way as the NHS and state pensions are funded. Otherwise, the Government could bring in new taxes or charges to pay for social care.

Wherever the money comes from, we believe that it’s crucial to increase spending on social care, so that everyone entitled to care is treated with dignity and gets the support they need.

Take action now

We are calling on the Government to reform the care system to ensure people in later life receive high quality care and support.

We want to collect 100,000 signatures and you can add your name to our petition right now:  

Sign our e-petition today