In its Pre-Budget report for their Adult Social Care inquiry today, the Communities and Local Government select committee calls for The Chancellor to bring forward £1.5bn funding from the ‘Better Care Fund’ to plug the hole in social care funding in the year ahead (2017/18). The Better Care Fund is a national funding pot which was intended to be spent on improving adult social care and bringing social care and health together, easing pressure on hospitals and the NHS. It has been announced but is not due to be released until 2019-20, despite the current crisis in social care funding which is seeing care homes and home care businesses closing and worrying signs of quality and safety dropping. The Committee also calls on the Government to commit to closing the funding gap for the rest of the Parliament through to 2020.
We gave written and oral evidence to the Select Committee about the role which innovations like Shared Lives and Homeshare could play in transforming social care. I agree with the committee that the Better Care Fund should be brought forward. But this would be to plug a current gap between what is being spent and what would be needed to achieve anything approaching minimum standards. It would not result in ‘Better Care’, but a slightly eased crisis. For better care, we also need a national vision for social care which has real ambition, which is prepared to take some sensible risks in scaling up the most promising models and significant additional investment. Programmes like Nesta’s Realising the Value and our work with SCIE and PPL on Total Transformation point the way towards a health and social care system which would work and be affordable long term, rather than relying on crisis handouts year after year. We all deserve better than that.
Escaping the invisible asylum 