Spending on adult care services has been cut by 8% in real terms since 2011 leaving local authorities struggling to cope with the increasing need for care, MPs are warning.
According to LG News:
Margaret Hodge, chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said: ‘The Government’s agenda to change and improve adult social care, most notably through the Care Act, is rightly ambitious. However, it simply does not know whether the care system has the capacity to become more efficient and spend less while continuing to absorb this increasing need for care.
‘We are particularly concerned that local authorities have cut costs, partly by paying lower fees to providers of care, which has led to very low pay for care workers, low skill levels within the workforce, and inevitably poorer levels of service for users. Safeguarding referrals recorded by local authorities have risen 13% in the two years from 2011.
It is appalling that up to 220,000 people working in the care system earn less than the minimum wage. In some areas, whilst local authorities might pay private providers £13 an hour, the worker only earns the minimum wage of around £6 per hour. It is also unacceptable that around one third of the workforce is on zero-hours contracts. At the same time 2.2 million people have had to give up work to care for family members, at extra cost to the Government through the benefits bill.
‘Whilst we welcome the commitment to this agenda of the Departments involved, we are concerned that they do not fully understand the scale of the challenges facing local authorities, or the costs associated with implementing the Care Act.
In response to this latest report, Cllr Katie Hall, chair of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, said: ‘This report is yet another stark warning to government that adult social care funding needs to be put on a sustainable footing or social care services will remain substantially underfunded and will suffer as a result.
‘Councils have made savings of £10bn in the last three years and will continue to try and protect spending on adult social care and safeguarding as much as possible. The Committee is right to highlight the real risk that the costs to councils associated with implementing the Care Act reforms will exacerbate the problem and must be fully funded.
‘Whilst councils fully support the ambitions of the Care Act reforms, we also agree that without sufficient funding we run the risk of raising expectations too high and jeopardising the potential of the reforms to truly support people’s wellbeing and independence.’