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Health leaders warn of impending ‘break down’ in social care, despite £600 million funding boost

Nurses and health leaders are raising concern over an underfunded social care sector, despite new funding being announced in the budget.

The Government’s 10-Year-Health-Plan to fix the NHS detailed the need for a shift from ‘sickness to prevention.’ The social care sector is crucial to achieving this as it reduces strain on the health system by keeping patients out of hospital and ‘well at home’ according to the NHS Confederation. However, prolonged underfunding and low staff levels have posed a threat to the sector’s overall stability.

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In order to provide some relief to the struggling system, the Autumn 2024 budget announced a £600 million injection into the social care sector ‘to reduce hospitalisations and prolong independence.’ However, health leaders have warned that this will not be enough to prevent the sector from a crisis which will spill over into the NHS. The RCN Chief Nursing Officer Lynn Woolsey warned that ‘when social care breaks down, some of the most vulnerable go without the care they need in the community. This puts huge pressure on an already struggling NHS, unable to treat patients or discharge them fast enough.’

Concerns persist that the grant detailed in the Budget will not compensate for long-term underinvestment, while staff numbers still continue to drop. ‘Overstretched staff working in social care have been sounding the alarm for years, but successive governments have failed to listen,’ said Woolsey.

According to the Local Government Association (LGA), the grant will ‘almost certainly’ be absorbed by cost increases, ‘leaving little or nothing to address immediate challenges in adult social care.’ The Autumn 2024 survey from the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) also revealed that a difficult year is ahead with 81% of English councils expected to over-spend their social care budget by £564 million, as a result of Integrated Care Board (ICB) pressure and the increasing demand for complex long-term care.

A growing number of council leaders have called on the Government to introduce multi-year funding to address the uncertainty and begin to put the sector on firmer footing. This call was recently taken up by Dame Meg Hillier MP. The influential chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. ‘Whilst we welcome the increase in funding, we fear this will do little to address the key challenges faced by the sector in the absence of a well-funded multi-year strategy,’ she said. ‘A 10-year vision is all well and good, but this alone is not enough to bring about the fundamental changes this sector so desperately needs.’