Care Minister tells providers to innovate to make ends meet as he can't promise extra funding

Care Minister Alistair Burt has told social care providers to be innovative in finding efficiencies because he can’t guarantee more funding.

Delegates on the third and final day of the annual National Children and Adult Services Conference (NCAS) in Bournemouth, were told: “Efficiencies can be found in new ways of working which mean improvements in care and financial savings.”

“Keeping the quality of care high is challenging, especially right now.

“Funding is still unclear. As I’m sure you know I’m not in a position now to go making any promises about the future of funding for social care. The truth is that I will find out what the funding is when you find out, when the Chancellor stands up in Westminster to deliver the Autumn Statement.”

The minister spoke of a changing landscape with the numbers of residential care homes falling by six per cent over the last few years and the numbers of new domiciliary care agencies up by more than 20 per cent.

He said: “Ultimately, care is expensive and the workload is rising.” The minister called on families to help out with the social care funding crisis by getting more involved with care. “Of course, this can’t all be down to the sector, we have to ask questions of society, too. I think it will become more and more likely that, to keep older people out of hospital and provide care, households will become multi-generational. Parents looking after parents, children growing up closer to their grandparents.”

The minister reminded delegates that over the last three years, the Government has transferred £3.2bn from the NHS budget to social care to improve care.

He said: “I will guarantee that my department will continue to work with ADASS [Association of Directors of Adult Social Services] and the LGA [Local Government Association] to support local providers of care, including a new guide on contingency planning for provider failure and offering more support to councils to meet their new Care Act duties.

“But whatever the future of funding is I want to be clear that I will stand by the care sector, working alongside care organisations, councils and the wider health and care service to make sure you get the support you need to provide the very best care.”

The minister then spoke about a newly-launched recruitment and retention strategy to support the adult social care workforce and address the issue of high turnover and vacancy rates in the sector.

Referring to the Government announcement that nurses will be temporarily added to the Government’s Shortage Occupation List which will allow nurses applying to work in the UK from outside the European Economic Area getting their applications prioritised, he said: “Care providers will start to have the nurses it needs to deliver the highest standards of care without having to rely on rip-off staffing agencies that cost the taxpayer billions of pounds a year.”

The Care Quality Commission's State of Care Report showed that, in spite of 60 per cent of services providing Good or Outstanding care, one in 10 services were rated as inadequate when it comes to safety.

In his concluding remarks Alistair Burt told conference delegates “I hope that you have used the opportunity that NCAS offers to go out there and speak to other professionals, to share ideas and difficulties, to try and form solutions on how to overcome those problems. In the months ahead – there is both legitimate concern facing us as well as huge possibilities to greatly improve what we do.”