In the last six months, more than one hundred home-based and residential care providers have ceased trading, affecting more than 5,300 people, as providers hand back contracts to more than sixty councils, affecting thousands of people. Social care faces a £3.5bn funding gap by 2025. Social care is in crisis and we have a government which is turning a blind eye to it.
Obsessed with Brexit, they have repeatedly ignored the challenge of social care and kicked it into the long grass. A long-delayed green paper on social care that was promised for June has yet again failed to materialise, along with the one they promised on social housing. Don’t get me started on that as well!
But local government, so used to picking up the pieces of central government failure, doesn’t think this crisis can be ignored any longer. We cannot allow this to continue. This week the cross-party Local Government Association has filled the vacuum left by a failing Tory government and published our own green paper on social care to kick start the honest and open debate we need about the care vulnerable people should receive and how it should be paid for. If the government isn’t willing to lead this debate then we will.
It is an ambitious and wide-ranging public consultation that sets out how the system can be improved and made more sustainable. It also highlights the sometimes radical options that need to be considered to tackle the funding crisis facing adult social care head-on.
LGA figures estimate that there will be a funding gap of almost £8bn by 2025. This makes it an even more urgent issue for the government to address – all the work we have seen in the last few years could be undone if this issue isn’t sorted.
Many of us will come into contact with the social care system at some point in our lives, be that because a loved one needs social care or because we need social care ourselves. Recent polling shows that the public and politicians support greater funding for social care. There is increasing consensus that a long-term solution is needed in terms of funding, and an increasing appetite to make the system fairer. To date our party has lead this debate we were the only party that had a clear and costed proposal for social care and health funding in our manifesto at the last election – which I am delighted is included as part of the consultation.
It is not enough just to fund the same model of care, which tries to patch people up when they are already in need of care and support. Councils and their partners in the NHS and community organisations want to develop community-based preventative support, linked into wider services such as housing, public health, leisure and recreation to keep people well and independent for as long as possible. And Liberal Democrat led Councils across the country from Sutton to Cumbria, Bedford to Cornwall our Councils are leading the way.
I would encourage everyone, regardless of whether you or your loved ones have needed social care or not, to read the LGA green paper and to respond to the consultation with your thoughts. You can do so here.
* Councillor Howard Sykes MBE is the Liberal Democrat Group Leader at the Local Government Association. The LGA is a politically-led, cross-party organisation that works on behalf of 415 councils to ensure local government has a strong, credible voice with national government.
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19 Comments
The other issue that must be faced up to is that the privatisation of Adult Social Care has resulted in the crisis we now see.
Sadly leading figures in the Lib Dem parliamentary party refuse to acknowledge this.
Of course more money is always a good thing but radical reform is what is really needed.
I have responded to the consultation and suggested a publicly funded national care service.
It would be great if others would join me.
I am pleased to see the LGA taking a lead on his is a crucial area of policy. Adult social care extends beyond residential care homes and home help for the elderly. If you have a health condition that seriously affects your mental capacity or your ability to move and look after yourself, you’re likely to need a much wider range of social care services. This is an area that has been severely impacted by cuts to local authority funding and in need of urgent attention.
Life expectancy in the UK has flatlined since 2011 and for the first time since the end of the first world war is expected to decline in the future https://theconversation.com/life-expectancy-in-britain-has-fallen-so-much-that-a-million-years-of-life-could-disappear-by-2058-why-88063
‘Obsessed with Brexit, they have repeatedly ignored the challenge of social care and kicked it into the long grass.’
Well hold on a moment… I’m far from being the sort that would usually speak up for the Conservatives, but on this occasion Mrs May deserves rather better than this!
Given that she went into the 2017 election with a very clear wish to tackle social care I would say that the is the first PM in a very, very long time to grapple with social care. OK, it went down badly (see for example the ‘Theresa May Estate Agent’ nonsense). So what? I keep hearing liberals tell me that the main parties pander and duck the tough questions – well there you were! The PM making an unpopular analysis and trying to do something radical and long term.
At best her critics were guilty of the exact duck they so often have accused government of. At worst that was actively saying that the maintenance of property windfalls for boomers was more important than a real effort to sort out social care.
I have no problem with the idea that May’s idea should not have been the last word. We can (should) argue about moral hazards. We should question whether money could be moved around to better fund social care, most notably from the pension triple lock. We can ask whether it is right that money from family homes should end up with private banks and insurers. None of that however detracts from the fact that when push came to shove few were willing to rock the boat on property wealth and that an awful lot of people have had a very sweet deal on housing that the young are not going to get.
In 10 years’ time we may well be back at something that looks like the May idea. In fairness to all of May, Corbyn and Cable social care is so problematic because their predecessors all ducked – May to her credit at least asked the question.
That link (https://futureofadultsocialcare.co.uk/summary-green-paper/six-how-should-we-pay-for-these-changes/) appears to say nothing about property wealth and appears to essentially look to tax increases plus a bit of tinkering. That’s certainly one approach, but is any mention of an option that looks to property wealth totally taboo now?
Jackie,
May might have asked the question but since the election she’s not attempted to answer it; why pray is that, could it be because something begining with B consumes all. I think you know the answer to that is a rather large YES.
Yes money will come in handy, Social Care MUST be coped with. It is time for innovation and creativity to be used. Innovation ,ie robots as companions, creativity, organisations individuals creating using their ideas to develop and encourage help in all manner of ways. Brain storming exercises to develop the future needs locally, nationally within the population
This creativity innovation to develop future models for care of individuals and groups should start in schools for they ,when adults, will be the carers.
Lord Willetts (now Chair of the Resolution Foundation) has entered the fray warning that the era of tax cuts is over https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/baby-boomers-tax-old-age-nhs-lord-willetts-resolution-foundation-a8240316.html.
As the Independent notes the Liberal Democrats have long been proponents of property tax reform. We need to get on with and have a clear and unequivocal position on the reforms required in advance of the next election that doesn’t involve putting the equivalent of 15p on the basic rate of income tax for working age adults, as Willetts warns.
We keep bumping up against the following fact “You get what you pay for”, unfortunately you still get politicians spinning the lie that “you can get more with less”. While the voters keep voting for the “more with less” option they really shouldn’t be surprised that they get very little. Before someone asks do you like paying taxes, no, no more than I like paying for petrol but I accept if I don’t pay for petrol I’m not going anywhere.
Social care needs to be taken away from councils and run as part of the NHS. There should be no threat of people losing their houses but funding could come from treating inherited wealth as income and getting rid of the inheritance tax allowance, inheritance monies when received by the individual would then be taxed as income, so small amounts to the poor would probably not be taxed at all whilst large amounts to the rich would be taxed at 40-45 percent. This seems fair to me and removes the threat of councils stealing people’s homes whilst they are at death’s door. If this money was ring-fenced for social care a large segment of the populace would accept it as fair – as long as things like family trusts and other cons set up to avoid inheritance tax were also taxed heavily.
You are right that many people can remain out of institutional care with the right package of support that requires social as well as care services. We should also provide a scheme that incentivises care by family such as paid leave and the right to request reduced hours to care for an elderly relative. Parents moving to live close to their children could be made easier combined with downsizing by building more mixed estates, perhaps with a discount for family members.
Really good comments @PeterHirst. I particularly like the idea of schemes to enable elderly parents to be move closer to family.
The days when families stayed in one town or city for generations are long gone.
Unfortunately in my experience adult social care teams lack any innovation. The approach seems to be put in a home care package and/or move into residential establishment.
Both involve sub contracting out to the private sector a model which has failed.
I declare an interest as a former Convenor (Chair) of Social Work and five times elected Liberal/Liberal Democrat Councillor. Councillor Sykes says, “Social care is in crisis – the Tories must face up to it”. (i.e., nothing to do with us).
But there is nothing new about it. Care home operator Southern Cross was not the first to shut down 752 care homes (31,000 residents) in 2011, and there was pressure on home care with cut to the bone contracts established by Blair’s ‘modernising’ – though to be fair adult social care spending rose faster than growth in the older population in the first half of the 2000’s.
More recently, Four Seasons a Guernsey (tax ?) based private equity group with £ 525 million debts is administered by a former (guess ??) Lehmann Brothers administrator. We also had the Dilnot Report in 2011.
With regret, Social Care was in crisis in 2010 when the Coalition came in.But far from reversing the trend the Coalition introduced cuts of around 40% to local authority core funding – though some of us tried to defend social care priority within our Councils.
For a serious interest in the subject, much research has been conducted, e.g. The Kings Fund Report, 2015.
The coalition government’s record on social care | The King’s Fund
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2015/03/coalition-governments-record-social-care
12 Mar 2015 – Chart courtesy of Burchardt T, Obolenskaya P, Vizard P (2015) The Coalition’s Record on Adult Social Care: Policy, Spending and Outcomes ..
The trouble is, Councillor Sykes, what you say is compromised by the Party’s record. It’s no good just blaming the Tories when the Lib Dems didn’t cover themselves with glory.
You also say, “Liberal Democrat led Councils across the country from Sutton to Cumbria, Bedford to Cornwall our Councils are leading the way”. I know of no LibDem led Council in Cumbria other than Tim’s District Council which has no Social Care responsibilities – the County (with some Lib Dems) is a Labour led Coalition.
The Party needs, if it is to be taken seriously, a thoroughly well researched report (aka Beveridge) into Social Care and to grasp the financial implications. We have the worst of all worlds at the moment…… and maybe in time the electors just might forget the party’s own record when in government.
Larry Elliot in the Guardian spells out what needs to be done https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/02/scrap-council-tax-redistribute-wealth-fix-housing-market
“The government is short of money. The Treasury is scrabbling around looking for ways to fund Theresa May’s pledge to spend an extra £20bn a year on the NHS. Pressures on the public finances are bound to continue increasing because the population is ageing and older people need more health and social care. The way to square the circle is obvious. Philip Hammond should use his autumn budget to announce the abolition of council tax and its replacement with a fairer system of property taxation. That means a land value tax, an idea whose time has come.”
“Labour’s interest in a land value tax is welcome and long overdue. Every government since Major’s has known full well about the inadequacies of council tax, and one of the great missed opportunities of the 1997-2005 period was Labour’s failure to use its two thumping parliamentary majorities to bring about change.”
“Various excuses have been trotted out over the past 25 years for leaving council tax in place, none of them especially convincing. The real reason for inertia is political cowardice: a deep fear of a backlash from those doing well out of the status quo. And that’s not good enough.”
@ Joe Bourke So no quick fix then ? How long would it take to implement your policy ?
@ William Fowler The NHS and local councils are already working together in Scotland – what we don’t want, thank you, is another Lansley type expensive re-organisation with Virgin cashing in even more with their £ 2 billion contracts..
PS. Still can’t believe the Lib Dem MPs voted for the Lansley shambles.
David Raw,
as Larry Elliot writes “Philip Hammond should use his autumn budget to announce the abolition of council tax and its replacement with a fairer system of property taxation. That means a land value tax, an idea whose time has come.”
Our policy of a 1p on income tax to raise 6 billion is becoming rapidly outdated.. Andrew Dilnot commenting last year rejected claims that Britain can’t afford a “decent care system”. “There’s plenty of money,” he said. “GDP in real terms is more than 5.5 times as big as it was in 1948. So if anyone says to you, we can’t afford X, Y or Z, the appropriate response is: ‘That is not a well-formed formula”. We may choose not to afford it but the notion that we can’t afford something, given what has happened to our income is striking and quite surprising, and doesn’t strike me as correct.” https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/06/andrew-dilnot-social-care-reviewer-condemns-uk-system-and-calls-for-new-tax
@Joe Bourke
But it all depends how LVT is implemented. If it is a tax levied by local councils in replacement for Council Tax, that would not be too bad because it would be going back to something like the old rates. But people like ALTER want it to be a nationally-levied tax, which means that it would fall disproportionately on London and the South East. We have seen what happened when May tried to introduce a new tax to pay for social care and we immediately branded it a ‘dementia tax’ and accused her of selling people’s homes to pay for their care. A nationally-levied LVT would cause riots that would make the poll tax protests look like a Sunday-afternoon picnic and they would be taking place in London because that would be the place hit hardest by LVT.
Laurence,
Mrs May floated a social care reform without clearly stating that there would be a cap on lifetime individual contributions required.
Over 50% of Londoners live in rented property and would pay no Land Value Tax, only a minimal council services tax for direct services like rubbish collection.
The rioters would be large landowners with a substantial portfolio of high value residential and/or commercial; property and foreign investors in top range luxury apartments.
The great majority of those living in their own homes would see minimal increases (or decreases in many cases) over and above existing council tax and will benefit from a cap on social care costs. The small percentage occupying expensive property relative to their income will also benefit from a cap on both social care costs that could othewise exhaust the value of their property (as happens now with many people needing residential care). Those eligible will additionally benefit from deferral of property tax as is the case with most property tax systems in developed countries throughout the world.
@ Joe I agree with your second para (and with Dilnot) but I’m afraid you didn’t answer the question about how long it would take to implement and how soon we could expect additional revenue.
The matter is urgent and can’t wait for LVT.
David Raw,
There are two key objectives:
1. To raise revenue by bringing rented property, second homes and land held out of use into a reformed business rates regime based on land rental values.
2. To make property tax more progressive by aligning tax assessments proportionally with land rental assessments net of a personal housing allowance.
For council tax reform I would propose a four year transition period concurrent with the conference motion on reform of business rates.
The first year would begin with land rental valuations for properties currently in bands G&H i.e. the highest value properties. In Year 2 bands E&F, Year 3 bands C&D and finally the lowest value properties in bands A&B.
The first year would see the majority of expected additional revenue coming in from the extension of business rates to rented property, second homes and land held out of use; and the move to proportionate assessments for the highest value residential properties in bands G&H.
I think we should start with housing. How many homes are wheel chair friendly? In Bath, where students have more home builds than anyone, it’s in very short supply. A few ago, I had an infection in my leg, I live several miles away from my family, suitable housing in short supply, it was Sunday, I needed medical treatment. It was either pay around £20 for a taxi, or wait for the bus to the hospital in Bath. Two buses. My family don’t have cars. Older people at present are supposed to have family support, but the housing does not match these options. It’s not that easy depending on bus services of you are less able.