Budget: Leaders call for Chancellor to 'tackle' future funding crisis of adult social care

Care leaders are calling for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to act now and "tackle the social care crisis” in tomorrow’s Budget.

Social care leaders from Care England, Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) and National Care Forum (NCF) are calling on the government for a 10-year plan and much-needed funding to help social care recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Care England has written to the chancellor urging him to make good on the government’s commitment to adult social care in his Budget this week.

Professor Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, says: “The sector is tired of empty promises, White Papers and consultations, 13 of these in the last 17 years, that always end up in the long grass. It is now or never; we need a 1948 moment with a commitment in the Budget that the Prime Minister will tackle the social care crisis.”

In January, Care England’s Budget submission called for a £7 billion injection into the adult social care sector in line with the Commons Health and Social Care Committees, as well as help with changing and operational costs from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also wants the Treasury to intervene on insurance and highlighted how employment in the adult social care sector can continue to play a valuable part in the UK’s job market.

Martin Green adds: “A 10-year plan akin to that of the NHS would be a great help to the sector, which in turn is part of the national infrastructure. Adult social care needs to be placed at the forefront of future policy planning and cannot remain an addendum to the NHS.”

’We’ve got to invest in training and in the workforce’

James Bullion, president of ADASS, wants the Chancellor to use the upcoming Budget to meet the needs of older and disabled people, carers and families and ensure they sit at the heart of the Government’s agenda and the heart of recovery.

Mr Bullion said: “We want to hear the Chancellor explicitly recognise the potential of adult social care to help drive economic recovery.

“We need more than just another reiteration of the promise the government will bring forward plans for social care later this year. Those plans should be a foundation stone of the recovery blueprint.”

Mr Bullion also wants a commitment to longer-term funding through a 10-year plan for adult social care. This must include early agreement on a comprehensive workforce plan which sets a social care minimum wage of £10.90 an hour.

In an interview with the Independent, Mr Bullion warned: “The social care workforce needs parity of value with the NHS and that means raising the wages of that workforce. Around 15 to 20 per cent of all care services have got a quality problem.

“If we want to solve that problem, we’ve got to invest in training and in the workforce. We need half a million new people working in social care over the next 10 years and we won’t get them by keeping wages low.”

During a speech at the UNISON women’s conference last week, Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner also called for an increase to care workers’ wages to at least £10 an hour to end the shame of "poverty wages".

The Labour party says increasing social care workers’ pay to at least £10 an hour would result in rises of up to £3,500 a year, which Ms Rayner argues would help secure the economy and contribute to the post-COVID-19 recovery.

Vic Rayner, chief executive of the NCF is concerned that care has long been "marginalised and neglected" as a central part of the economy.

She said: “The pandemic has had a devastating impact on social care and shone a real spotlight on many of the issues it was already facing. Care has long been marginalised and neglected as a central part of our economy.

“Now is the time to act, we are ambitious for social care and we need this budget to show just how ambitious the government and the country are for social care too.”