The Independent Care Group has sent an impassioned plea to the Chancellor not to impose any further financial hardship on the care of older, vulnerable and disabled adults.
The ICG has sent an open letter to Rachel Reeves urging her to support rather than harm social care when she presents her Autumn Statement.
Their plea comes amidst fears that the Government will not boost funding to local authorities for care but will increase employer National Insurance contributions, both of which would hit social care hard.
“It isn’t too late,” said ICG Chair Mike Padgham. “The Chancellor must pull away from measures that will harm the care of the most vulnerable and support the social care sector instead.
“The number of people living without the care they need has topped 2m for the first time but if the Chancellor doesn’t support us at the end of the month, things will get even worse.”
In his letter to the Chancellor, Mr Padgham says the Government needs to increase rather than decrease the funding it gives to commissioners like local authorities to buy care from providers. And he warns that an increase in National Insurance would hit social care providers and be at odds with the Government’s desire to see more people looked after in their own home. He also argues that the Government must support social care if it is to succeed in its proposals to reform and improve the NHS.
In the letter he says:
“In particular, an increase in National Insurance payments for employers would hit social care providers particularly hard. Two thirds of our costs are on staffing and the sector is already under-staffed and struggling to recruit, with 131,000 vacancies in the sector. Adding another cost to employers would bring further pressure and might put some providers out of business. It would also be at odds with the Government’s desire to have more people looked after in their own homes. An increase in National Insurance would be particularly harsh on domiciliary care, which is very staff intensive.”
And he adds: “We cannot start to ease hospital waiting lists and empty hospital beds if there is no social care to look after people in the community. We have to tackle the 2m people who currently cannot get care and the 131,000 vacancies in the sector, not to mention the lengthening list of care home closures.”
Mr Padgham says there are sound economic as well as social and moral arguments for supporting social care.
He adds in the letter: “The latest Skills for Care report revealed that social care now contributes £68.1bn to the England economy and employs 1.7m. That is a significant contribution, but it could contribute and employ considerably more if resources were switched from the NHS to support the sector. Skills for Care says an extra £6.1bn invested in social care would provide economic benefits of £10.7bn – for every £1 invested, a return of £1.75. Moving money from the NHS into social care would significantly save money for the NHS by keeping people out of costly hospital beds.
“We will need an extra 540,000 care staff to cope with rising demand, by 2040. We will not be able to recruit those people and meet that demand if we cannot pay our staff properly. To do that we need social care commissioners to pay providers a fair price for the care they provide. Continuing cuts to local authority budgets have prevented them from paying a fair price for care in recent years, reducing the amount of care available and creating care deserts – areas where it is virtually impossible to get local authority-funded care.”