Stopping care funding lottery

If the coalition Government wants to be true to its stated commitments to “localism”, “fairness”, “the Big Society”, then, says Andy Rickell, it needs to reform adult social care by removing the responsibility for allocating its funding from local authorities

In 23 October, just after the spending review, David Cameron was quoted as saying: “What’s more we’ve chosen to protect the services that families rely on, like the health service, schools and social care.” Indeed the spending review actually added money to the allocated social care pot. But now we’re at the point in the year when local authorities set their budgets, and we can expect to see major social care cuts.

Why? Because social care funding is not decided by Westminster government. Instead lots of local authorities make those decisions – choosing between social care and potholes in the road, or libraries, or education, or recycling. Central and local government will blame each other – like a pair of twin Pontius Pilates washing their own hands and denying responsibility for the social care cuts or the hikes in charges, leaving disabled and older people unable to hold anyone to account.

This charade, which results in opaque postcode lottery entitlements, uncertain and unfair charging costs and an inability to take a known social care package with you if you want or need to move, has to stop. This approach to funding originates from a model which assumes social care should be delivered collectively. But direct payments and individual budgets mean social care can now be individual and personalised. This true “localism” empowers the individual directly – the local authority is no longer needed as a middleman. A local bureaucrat is no more accountable than a central one, but having a local one too just adds cost and allows responsibility to be avoided.

Indeed one council leader admitted that they spend £1 in every £3 of social care money deciding what to spend the other £2 on! Enough of wasting money that disabled and older people could be better using themselves.

Local authorities should have strategic responsibility for overseeing the flourishing of a local social care market – nothing more. An amount equal to the rest of current social care funding should be removed from council grants, and distributed by a central government department, based on a nationally uniform transparent and supported assessment process that can be delivered locally via something like a Jobcentre equivalent.

With intelligent use of people knowledgeable in the social care personalisation agenda – retrained social workers etc – this can be a much more efficient process, empowering disabled and older people with the money they are entitled to directly.

And it offers real roles for the effective work of centres for independent living and other disabled people’s organisations.

Please can we make sure that the long-term reform of social care funding is about a fair and better system that empowers citizens, not just another “reform” exercise which only seems to care about reducing public funding.