Social care charities call on Chancellor to acknowledge care funding crisis

Government needs to realise the necessity of fresh care provision funding, according to leading sector voices who are hoping to see the realities of an ageing population recognised in today’s Comprehensive Spending Review.

The Alzheimer’s Society is particularly concerned that austerity is having a negative impact upon the well-being of adults diagnosed with dementia, challenging the Chancellor George Osborne to help those at crisis point.

Claiming that £1.8m has been taken out of the social care system since 2010, the charity draws on a recent YouGov poll to show that care sector issues have the weight of public support, with 91 per cent of Britons estimated to support more government expenditure in services for people with dementia.

Chief executive Jeremy Hughes comments: “People with dementia have become the collateral damage of austerity, with councils across the country forced to cut care because of a huge black hole in funding. This spending review is an opportunity for the Government to invest in care so that people with dementia can be supported to live well either at home or in a care home rather than reaching crisis point.

“The care system is supposed to be about prevention but lack of resources mean it is sadly reduced to a crisis intervention role. We need more investment to stop the system from needing rescue itself. Eighty per cent of people in care homes and a quarter of people in hospitals have dementia. Failure to act is not an option.”

A recent report by the charity, ‘Support. Stay. Save’, estimates that 1 in 10 individuals with dementia, who live at home, have faced unnecessary hospital admissions because of substandard care provision.

Michelle Rainford, from Wigan, is someone whose father experienced the negative impact of this systemic failure. Commenting on his experience, she says: “Because the funding wasn’t available to support dad at home, he ended up going to hospital – which made his dementia progress faster. He was in hospital for four months and sadly couldn’t return home. If he’d got the right support and care at home that would have allowed him to live well for longer.”

The Care and Support Alliance are another organisation looking to put pressure on the Government. In a letter to the Chancellor, chief executive Richard Hawkes wrote: ‘…social care is still playing “catch up” after having been chronically underfunded for decades: this at a time when the numbers of older people and disabled adults needing social care have been consistently rising. The result today is a gap between the demand for and supply of social care that will simply keep on growing unless additional investment is made.’