Prime Minister must find consensus on health and social care
The Chairs of three House of Commons Select Committees are urging the Prime Minister to reach a cross-party agreement on the future of health and social care funding in a letter published on 6th January: Letter to Prime Minister regarding health and social care, 6 January 2017 (PDF 904 KB)
The Committee Chairs have stated that a “political consensus” is needed to address the “pressing social care challenges facing the country” and that it must also include the NHS. They call on the Prime Minister to invite all parties to take part in an urgent review, covering the health and social care systems.
The Committee Chairs argue that a consensus should be reached swiftly so that the agreed approach can be reflected in the next round of Government spending.
‘We also feel that the ongoing separation of health and social care is creating difficulties for individuals and avoidable barriers and inefficiencies. Any review should cover the two systems’.
Read at source: Prime Minister must find consensus on health and social care
Related reading
Council leaders back calls for cross-party deal on social care. Read more: here
The ADCS Safeguarding Pressures Phase 5 has warned of the unstable funding hitting children’s social care.
‘In the future, the local councils face risks such as growing needs among some groups in the population, for example in relation to child sexual exploitation and mental health, which are DfE’s own research into children’s services spending and delivery (2016f) concluded that budgets were decreasing against rising demand, and particularly uncertain and have implications for future spending. The capacity to forecast, and prepare for those risks is very limited’.
State of the nation report:
‘Current funding levels for adult social care are not sufficient to enable the council to continue to meet its statutory obligations under Care Act 2014 to assess and meet the needs of people requiring care and support. The council is experiencing increasing demand for adult social care whilst experiencing signi cant reductions in funding. The council has oversight duties for an increasingly fragile social care provider market. We are experiencing providers withdrawing from the market, entering into nancial administration and increasing numbers of quality concerns’
Camden Council
Read: Adult social care funding 2016: state of the nation report
niromp.org 