No More Social Care Cuts Urged

20 July 2016 | Updated 01 January 1970

A report by the Parliamentary Health Committee has declared that while the NHS is under ‘unprecedented strain’ the social care sector has reached the limit in terms of more efficiencies being made.

In its report – Impact of the Spending Review on health and social care – the Health Committee cited the scale of the funding challenge in health as ‘colossal and while spending on health is increasing, the service is under unprecedented strain and struggling to keep pace with relentlessly rising demand’.

Last year's Spending Review announced that the NHS would receive an additional £8.4 billion above inflation by 2020-21. But while previous spending reviews define health spending as the whole of the Department of Health's budget, the 2015 Spending review defines it in terms of NHS England's budget which excludes, for example, spending on public health, education and training. Using the original definitions, and taking 2015-16 as the base year, total health spending will increase by £4.5 billion in real terms by 2021.

The Committee Chair, Dr Sarah Wollaston MP, accepted that a degree of protection had been set out by the government but that the increase in health funding was less than was promised “if assessed by the usual definitions”.

The committee also criticised the cuts to health education at a time when the workforce shortfall was already placing a “significant strain on services and driving higher agency costs”.

It also noted that sustainability and transformation funds were being used almost entirely to plug provider deficits, rather than to resource essential changes to the health and social care system at scale and pace.

Social care funding

The committee also examined the likely impact of the spending review on social care services and the government’s commitment to achieve parity of esteem for mental health.

“Historical cuts to social care funding have now exhausted the opportunities for significant further efficiencies in this area,” noted Dr Wollaston. “Increasing numbers of people with genuine social care needs are no longer receiving the care they need because of a lack of funding. This not only causes considerable distress to these individuals and their families but results in additional costs to the NHS. We are concerned about the effect of additional funding streams for social care not arriving until later in the parliament.”

While the committee welcomed the plans for additional funding for mental health, there was a danger that this could get sucked into deficits in the acute sector particularly as there was seen to be a lack of accurate data on mental health spending. “We expect to see clear, verifiable evidence that the additional funding promised for mental health is being delivered to the front line if we are to make progress towards parity of esteem,” stated Wollaston.

Reaction

Care England, the largest representative body for independent care providers was quick to comment on the parliamentary report.

“The findings demonstrate very clearly that people are not getting the care that they need and this needs to be tackled with immediate action,” observed Professor Martin Green, CEO, Care England. “One of the committee’s key recommendations is that the government urgently assesses and sets out publicly the additional costs to the NHS as a result of delayed transfers of care and the wider costs to the NHS associated with pressures on adult social care budgets more generally.”

Professor Green went on to state that Care England was very supportive of this recommendation and hoped that the committee would “hold the government to account by ensuring that the assessment is accompanied by a plan for adult social care which demonstrates that it is addressing the situation in social care and dealing with its effect on health services”.

Picture: The latest parliamentary report on NHS and social care stated that there could be no more cuts in social care sector

Article written by Mike Gannon | Published 20 July 2016