The Government has held back £600m of promised social care funding after its drive to reduce delayed discharges cost £4.3m per bed.
Latest official figures showed the number of people stuck unnecessarily in hospital beds has dropped by just 176 since last April despite the Government investing an extra £750m since September to tackle bed blocking.
Announcing its ‘next steps’ to reform social care, the Government admitted £600m ‘remained to be allocated’ but would be invested ‘over the next two years’ after ministers had ‘drawn on lessons learned from our investment in improving discharge’.
NHS data showed the ‘number of patients remaining in hospital who no longer meet the criteria to reside’ stood at 13,052 on 26 March compared to 13,228 on 1 April last year.
President of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), Sarah McClinton, accused the Government of ducking the hard decisions and again kicking the can down the road while social care was ‘in crisis’.
She said ministers had left their own social care vision ‘in tatters’ with staff vacancies at an all-time high and 500,000 people waiting for care and support.
Ms McClinton added: ‘Now’s not the time to be holding funding back - it needs to reach people who need care and support as soon as possible.’
Ministers’ new plans for £2bn of previously-announced funding included proposals to further digitise social care, ‘bolster the workforce’ and speed up hospital discharges over the next two years.
The £2bn includes funding for more training places and a new care certificate qualification, £1.4bn for councils to ‘use flexibly including to increase the rates paid to social care providers or reduce waiting times,’ and £50m to improve social care insight, data and quality assurance.
Health minister Helen Whately said ‘care depended completely on the people who do the caring,’ adding: ‘That’s why this package of reforms focuses on recognising care with the status it deserves while also focusing on the better use of technology, the power of data and digital care records, and extra funding for councils – aiming to make a care system we can be proud of.’
However, ADASS said half of a promised £500m for training and development had been withheld, along with £300m for councils to improve housing support for people in need of care.
At the time of going to press, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) had failed to comment on the performance of its two multi-million pound initiatives to address delayed discharges.
This week the Government’s official review of Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) by former health secretary Patricia Hewitt warned social care must become a ‘national priority’ if the new bodies were to succeed.
The review called for a workforce strategy for social care, increased funding for public health, an alignment of budgets and grants for health and local government, and an end to ‘small in-year funding pots with extensive reporting requirements’.
It called for a ‘new model with a far greater degree of autonomy,’ with ‘no more than 10 national priorities’.
In addition to a ‘strong voice’ for social care providers and the embedding of public health expertise in systems, it also recommended shifting funding away from treatment towards prevention and a national peer review offer ‘building on learning from the LGA [Local Government Association] approach’.
The County Councils’ Network’s adult social care spokesperson, Martin Tett, said local government needed ‘a strong and accountable voice’ within ICSs to avoid a ‘postcode lottery’.
A DHSC spokesperson said: ‘Ministers will review recommendations of this report in due course.’
