Continuing to do nothing on social care is an active decision, and an untenable one say a committee of MP’s who add that too much emphasis is put on the cost of change and not enough consideration is given to the human and financial cost of inaction.
Parliament’s cross-party Health and Social Care Committee today (Monday 5 May) warn that the Government needs to measure the true cost of inaction on social care, to be able to present a robust financial case for reforms of the system, saying that “without this we fear that the reforms that come out of the Casey Commission will be doomed to failure, leaving everyone continuing to suffer under the current unsustainable system.”
The Committee’s report cites the lack of official data held by the Government relating to social care and says it believes that the Government does not know what the potential monetary benefits of a reformed system might be and cannot assess which social care reform interventions would result in the highest returns.
MPs fear that reforms will continue to be frustrated by concerns about the expense, unless there is a robust understanding at the centre of government of the cost of doing nothing. They warn that ignoring the cost of the status quo would leave us all continuing to pay “a high price for a failing system”.
MPs want the Government to commission research to fully quantify the cost of continued inaction and call on it to publish data including an annual assessment of the level of unmet care needs for adults, as well as an annually published official estimate detailing how much delayed discharges are costing the NHS.
The Committee’s report sets out how the existing adult social care (ASC) system is not meeting the needs of the population and “the Government and taxpayers are currently paying £32 billion a year for a broken system”.
MPs highlight that this is despite the enormous contribution by unpaid carers, who provide care worth £184 billion a year, “equivalent to a second NHS”, and who are bearing the highest cost from failures to reform adult social care.
The broken system is also straining local authorities’ budgets with an increasingly high proportion of spending on adult social care, which MPs state is crowding out spending on other services, such as fixing potholes, keeping libraries open and providing youth services.
The report expresses the Committee’s concern that there is a growing disconnect between where council tax revenue is being spent and what services residents expect to see delivered from their council tax – undermining trust in local democracy.
MPs also point to the impact of the status quo on the NHS and say that social care reform is an integral part of NHS reforms and cannot be a separate process. The Committee urges Baroness Casey, in her first report, to set out the immediate steps that the Government needs to take to ensure the adult social care sector can play its vital part in the three shifts for NHS reform.
The Committee’s report highlights the social care sector’s potential to drive economic growth, contribute to regional rebalancing, and increase employment, but says that the economy is currently missing out on this potential.
The report finds that every £1 invested in the sector would generate a £1.75 return to the wider economy and that an extra £1 billion spent on social care would create 50,000 jobs across the country.
Stressing the need for reforms, MPs call on the Government to produce a growth strategy for the adult social sector care sector, and say “the Government needs to fundamentally change how it views the social care sector, seeing it as an enabler and talking about it in those terms in the public debate.”
