LibLink: Sal Brinton; The NHS can’t work without a sustainable social care system

As the NHS turned 70 this week, Sal Brinton looked back at the development of social care policy and outlined the Government’s failings:

… since 2015, the new Conservative Government has dithered and delayed, repeatedly promising that they would sort out the social care funding problem.

We still await the Green Paper promised in the Conservative 2017 Manifesto – with a side skirmish of the Dementia Tax, a form of inverse Dilnot, which so outraged voters it was dropped mid election.

Councils have faced massive cuts to all services, including making £6bn savings in adult social care since 2010. They are still being asked to make more each year at the same time as coping with increased numbers of elderly in their communities. Worse, one of Seebohm’s key pillars, public health, has taken a double hit, with £200m cut in 2015 and a further reduction of £331m proposed.

The numbers are shocking enough, but the reality of reductions in funding is reduction in services to vulnerable adults, increased charges to clients, and distressing waits for people to be discharged from hospital to receive care in their communities.

It is also affecting our NHS minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

The recent announcement by the Government to rename the Department of Health into the Department of Health and Social Care on its own will do nothing without the funding.

You can read the whole article here.

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3 Comments

David Raw 8th Jul '18 - 3:25pm

Sal says, ” since 2015, the new Conservative Government has dithered and delayed, repeatedly promising that they would sort out the social care funding problem.” and then she says, “Councils have faced massive cuts to all services, including making £6bn savings in adult social care since 2010.”

I was calling for, and helped to set up, joined up thinking on social care/health back in 2007-2009 when I was a Convenor for Social Care…….. and we did make some progress…. but I must say (as plenty of others will) that a certain party did have some responsibilities (and some power) after May, 2010….. and what happened to the £ 6 billion in cuts ?. Let’s hope for a Damascene conversion that means something in the Lib Dems.
Joseph Bourke 8th Jul '18 - 6:08pm

David Willetts (formerly of Vince Cable’s business dept) is Chairing an inter-generation commission for the Resolution foundation. In a recent speech he noted:
“For 30 years Britain has enjoyed a time when the baby boomers were at their peak earning power. We benefitted from lower pressures on public spending. Politicians talked as if tax cuts were the normal state of British politics.
“But we are now at a tipping point. The baby boomers are moving into retirement and there are fewer younger working age people coming up behind them.
“As we at last emerge from deficits the recession gave us in this decade we need to look forward to the pressures an ageing population is set to give us in the next.

“The time has come when we Boomers are going to have reach into our own pockets. The alternative could be an extra 15p on the basic rate of tax, paid largely by our kids.
“Is that kind of tax really the legacy we – a generation who own half the nation’s wealth – want to bequeath our children and grandchildren?”
Lord Willetts made the case for higher capital taxes on Britain’s record levels of wealth, including a long-overdue reform of council tax and inheritance tax.
On council tax he cited the inequity of the proportional tax rate for a family living in a £100,000 house being five times that of someone living in a £1 million pound property, saying:
“Yes, some should pay more. But there are ways to help asset-rich, low-income older families, for example through deferred payments. And those with the lowest incomes would pay less, as will younger people who don’t own their own homes.
“…unless we act, at some point we will face a choice between changing our approach to taxation, or cutting access to the NHS and letting social care get into an even deeper crisis. We can’t delay that debate any longer.”

“My parents’ generation bequeathed the creation of the modern welfare state six decades ago. The gift to my children’s generation – and those that follow – should be a fair funding settlement that all contribute to, for a modern welfare state that supports young, old and those in between over the next 60 years.”
William Fowler 9th Jul '18 - 6:40am

“Politicians talked as if tax cuts were the normal state of British politics.”
Except the tax take went up as taxes fell and the reverse will happen if taxes go up by the large amount that is suggested. The legacy we are going to leave our children post Brexit is falling tax revenues and the need for some much deeper cuts to compensate. By all means work out a decent combined health/social care budget, inflation proof it and ring-fence it but then the serious business of fairly spending the rest of the money (a lot less that is currently spent) has to be sorted out.

Scotland is integrating health and social care, why no analysis of how increased social care spending is saving health money? How many people actually need social care (it is a surprisingly small number given our aged population) and how much is currently being spent and how much of that is wasted on private agencies? Before trying to tax the populace into oblivion some sensible analysis of current spending is needed.