Who would care for mum?

The complexity of the legal framework, the raft of regulations to plug gaps and the confusion many people experience when trying to navigate the existing care system tells us that care and support badly needs reform. The Care Bill is a vital part of the changes that are necessary. Age UKurges parliamentarians to support this important Bill that clarifies and brings up to date the legal framework of the care system.

The Bill could be strengthened during its parliamentary progress. We would particularly like to see the Bill amended to:

• Better meet unmet needsby ensuring the wellbeing principle in Clause 1 is broad and linked to the Secretary of State’s duties; and, by ensuring there is sufficient care and support provision in each local area;
• Help ensure quality and dignityin the provision of services by strengthening adult safeguarding, better integrating care after a hospital stay and ensuring dignity has a high profile in the changes proposed to the NHS;
• Help control catastrophic costsfor individuals by securing a national deferred payment scheme and ensuring the clauses relating to future funding are adequate.

The current and future funding of adult social care is likely to be ‘the elephant in the room’ throughout the progress of this Bill. Social care funding has declined by £710 million in real terms since the Government came to power in 2010 ( Age UK analysis of DCLG Revenue Account Data. Inflation calculated using RPI). This is at the same time as the population of over 85s, the cohort most likely to need social care, continues to rise. So budgets are falling while demand is rising. Further cuts to local authority budgets projected in 2014/15 are very likely to impact further on councils’ social care budgets. Our latest research shows that in total in 2012/13 nearly 36% of the total number of delayed discharge days in the last year are linked to waiting for social care provision and the total estimated cost since the Coalition came to power is £260 million, or over one million NHS days.

The Care Bill offers an ambitious and positive vision for the future of social care. It guarantees an individual’s wellbeing and protects them from unreasonable costs. But in the current funding climate the sad truth is that this vision cannot possibly be realised. This shortfall in funding must be addressed. If this doesn’t happen we fear that public confidence in the care system will be seriously undermined. The Government would also be open to criticism for rightly lauding a Bill which potentially offers so much while failing to provide the means to enable its vision to be realised.

Age UK’s Care in Crisis campaign is aiming to finally put an end to the Care Crisis that so many older people face. Find out more about how older people have been affected.

Read Age UK’s 2nd Reading Briefing