The Government has unveiled its blueprint for a ‘fully-funded solution’ to the social care time-bomb, with details expected to include a £75,000 cap on the care costs people pay over their lifetime, acording to Local Government News today – read on for the article…..
Controversially this cap will not include the cost of accommodation and food and is more than twice the amount recommended by Andrew Dilnot who led the Government’s inquiry into solutions to funding long-term adult care.
The proposals, due to be outlined in the Commons today by health secretary Jeremy Hunt are also likely to include a rise in the threshold for means-tested support from £23,250 to £123,000. The changes are due to be introduced from 2017.
Hunt has insisted the proposals will help tackle the ‘scandal’ of residents selling their property to pay care bills, which he claimed forces 40,000 people a year to lose their home.
The cost of accommodation in residential care homes averages about £7,000-£10,000 a year.
Hunt said 10% of people ended up paying more than £100,000 in care costs, and that ‘just as people make provisions for their pensions in their 20s and 30s, so we also need to be a country that prepares for social care as well’.
However, critics have already rounded on the proposals describing the £75,000 cap as failing to help the most vulnerable of residents.
‘These proposals won’t do anything for the hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled people who are facing a desperate daily struggle to get the care and support they need right now,’ Labour’s shadow minister for care and older people Liz Kendall said.
Cllr David Rogers, chair of the Local Government Association’s community wellbeing board, said: ‘On its own a cap is not enough to sort out long-term care and will mean little if the starting point is a system that is massively under-funded and unable to cope with the pressures of our rapidly ageing population. Alongside sustainable funding we also need the wider reforms to make the system simpler and clearer.
‘We remain concerned about the disproportionate financial implications this cap could have on councils in different parts of the country and would be encouraged if government looked to understand and act on this.’