As delegates arrive at the National Children and Adult Services (NCAS) conference in Bournemouth, John Bolton reviews two funding ‘fixes’ for the adult social care system. But he’s pessimistic that anyone ‘will grab either of these particular “bulls” and run with them’

A national newspaper recently reported that ‘social care is being edged out of the Conservative manifesto as the Tories balk at the political and financial cost of fixing the crumbling elderly care system’. It got me thinking about why this has become such a hard issue to solve. There are several competing factions in adult care who want additional monies to spend in very different ways. Each faction has a bill for their proposed changes that will ‘fix’ the system. Each bill will come to several billion pounds.