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Despite the rumours and the nods and winks, there’ll be no Royal Commission on the future of social care.
But...
I think it was Albert Einstein who said;
'Coincidence is God’s way of
remaining anonymous’.
Little did we know it but yesterday there was a spectacular coincidence that I cannot let-go unnoticed.
The King may have been given nothing to read about social care, but the rest of us were gifted the Directors of Adult Social Services 2024 Spring Survey.
If their report were any other form of writing it would be the screenplay for a horror movie.
Here are the key facts
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The financial situation facing Directors of Adult Social Care is as bad as it been in recent history.
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Budgets in 2023/24 were overspent by £586mn, the highest levels for at least a decade.
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The £903mn savings required for 2024/25 are the highest since 2016/17.
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90% of Directors indicated that they are either partially confident or have no confidence that their budgets will be sufficient to fully meet their statutory duties in 2024/25.
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60% of Directors lack confidence that their budgets will enable them to meet their legal duties relating to care market sustainability.
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More people now require more intensive care and support. Meaning a 74% increases in the size of care packages.
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Council-funded home-care requiring more than one member of staff rose by 7.4%.
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Investment in prevention fell from £1,549mn in 2023/24 to £1,428mn in 2024/25.
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The proportion of councils taking a positive investment strategy for preventative social care services has also dropped to 29%.
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The number of Directors reporting a significant increase in the number of new people failing to qualify for Continuing Healthcare (CHC) has increased from 56% last year to 76% this year… despite an ageing population and increased acuity and complexity of need. [this is because the bar for eligibility has been raised to save money].
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There is an increasing trend of people who previously qualified for CHC being reviewed to find they no longer qualify. [Eligibility criteria]
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Adult social care staff are undertaking tasks that were previously delivered by NHS staff... unfunded... without training or supervision from the NHS.
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Some 418,029 people were waiting for an assessment, care or direct payments to begin or a review of their care plan.
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The number of home-care hours delivered between January and March 2024, 45 million hours… 30% higher than between January and April 2021.
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Care markets remain unstable, with many providers struggling.
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65% of Directors reported that providers in their area had closed, ceased trading or handed back council contracts.
It’s hard to digest all that without coming to the conclusion that ‘fixing social care’ has to be at the top of someone’s agenda. The problem is, who?
Hospitals are glittery and sexy, the focus of the media. Systems are easy to tinker with and make politicians look busy.
GPs deal with a million people a day. Many who may well be vocal and rightly stroppy if they don’t get their way.
There are organisations and think tanks and commentators and observers, keen to get a headline by talking about waiting times or new drugs or awful failures.
Who speaks for the families facing the desperate decline of their granny. Who speaks for the nearly a million old and frail, marooned and no longer getting the care they once had.
Who will put the ADASS report in the headlines, on a day when the nation is focussed on the wealth and glamour of Parliament and distracted by discussing and dissecting the King’s Speech. The enthusiasm for a shiny new government, its ambitions and pet projects.
Who will focus Streeting’s bravura for change on the one thing that would make real change for millions of people and their families. Plus make a huge strategic difference to the NHS and its performance.
Who will remind this government there are some very unglamorous basics they have to knuckle-down and fix. Not because they chose to but because they are a government and cannot pick and chose.
It is a measure of government how it treats its people at the sunrise of life, the sunset of life and in the shadows of life.
Not because it’s a choice but because it is what a government is for.
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