Local authorities criticised for failing 'to give a higher priority to older people'

Adults social services directors need to be answerable to their own ‘bleak picture’ outlook, according to the Registered Nursing Home Association (RNHA).

The annual survey of ADASS (the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services) predicted an £800m shortfall in care funding over the next 12 months, while finding that a fifth of councils are considering cutting personal budgets.

However, RNHA chief executive Frank Ursell sees social services departments as part of the problem, in failing to ‘fulfil their own statutory obligations’, as 20 per cent cuts over the last three years shows.

He comments: “The social services directors themselves have publicly acknowledged that around half of care home providers are experiencing financial difficulties and that for the year ahead around half of local authorities have not increased the fees they pay for publicly funded care home residents. Yet their declared intention appears to be to impose further cutbacks on services and to try to shift activity to cheaper settings wherever possible.

“Quite naturally, we and many families are concerned that vulnerable older people will not get their needs met, with many of them being fobbed off with occasional domiciliary care when they really need the 24-hour care that a nursing home provides. Does this mean that local authorities will bow to government diktat rather than fulfil their own statutory obligations? And where does it leave those who genuinely need help?”

He continues: “The directors of adults social services have painted a bleak picture which, by their own admission, is likely to get bleaker still at a time when an ageing population will throw up additional demands for care.

“We in the care sector would beg to suggest that councils have to give a higher priority to older people who cannot look after themselves. At the same time, we and the social services directors need to send a clear and unequivocal message to the government that the austerity programme has already gone too far in reducing essential services in the community. The time for a re-think in the corridors of power is long overdue.”