The Independent Care Group is calling on the Government to wake up to dire warnings over the imminent collapse of care for older, vulnerable and disabled adults.
The call to act follows a major survey which found that 22% of providers were planning to close their businesses entirely with more set to make staff redundant.
The warning comes after the Government announced a rise in employer National Insurance payments and increases in the national living and minimum wages.
The ICG says the Government has to wake up to the situation.
“I think there is a danger that the Government is sleepwalking into a very dangerous situation for care in this country,” ICG Chair Mike Padgham warned.
“I fear it seriously underestimated the impact the National Insurance and wage increases would have on a sector that has been brutally neglected for three decades.
“With today’s survey results warning of dire consequences, the Government has to act and either make the sector exempt from the ENIC increase or ensure that there is funding ring-fenced with local authorities to help us pay it.”
Earlier research by the Nuffield Trust estimated that social care providers would face an increase of £2.8bn in costs due to National Insurance and wage increases. It warned that the “…combined financial impact of the ENIC rise and the new minimum wage level might see not just single providers going out of business but large swathes of the market collapsing.”
Today’s survey of 1,180 care providers, carried out by the Care Provider Alliance, found that 22% of those who responded were planning to close their business; 73% will have to refuse new referrals from local authorities or the NHS; 57% planned to hand back some contracts and 64% feared having to make staff redundant.
Mr Padgham added: “We have long argued that the social care sector was teetering on the brink of collapse and feared that it might just take one thing to tip it over the edge – we might just have reached that point.
“Whilst government after government have been able to ignore the quiet erosion of the sector through the loss of smaller providers over the years, they will not be able to turn a deaf ear on an avalanche of provider closure, if the results of this survey are borne out.”