That will teach me to have a week off, given the two major announcements when I was away. One, almost in a blink-and-miss-it way, and the other with unmissable headlines around the potential impact on everyone as well as on businesses.

We now know both the date for the Spending Review (27 October) and some detail around health and social care funding. It’s interesting to see how the mainstream media are picking up the fact that social care seems to be the poorer relation in announcements around funding, something not always willingly acknowledged – or dare I say – even noticed by some before. After the headlines drift away and more detailed analysis is sought, the voice of social care and what it covers becomes ever more important.

If you consider that the announcements so far and much of the commentary is around older people, it often bypasses the much broader aspects of what we deal with on a day-to-day basis for younger adults, around mental health, supporting those with disabilities as well as those supported in their own domestic settings.
As finance teams, even those who haven’t necessarily been experts in social care until now, need to become familiar with the facts and figures that surround this area and develop a much broader understanding of the real impact on our resources.