Local gov will struggle to meet growing need for social care

A new poll has revealed that nine out of ten MPs say that local government does not have enough resource to meet the growing need for social care services.

Commissioned by the Health for Care coalition, the research also found that three in five MPs believe that the social care budget should be raised by £7 billion a year over the next two years.

Health for Care – a coalition of 15 national health organisations, led by the NHS Confederation – warns that the social care system needs urgent and radical reform and significant investment and is calling on the government to rapidly deliver on its manifesto pledge to transform the struggling sector.

The findings of the survey of nearly 100 MPs and over 500 English councillors highlights the pressing need for a long-term funding strategy and swift transformation in social care, ahead of Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Budget on 3 March.

The poll shows that over three quarters of MPs believe the budget for social care should be raised. This included almost two thirds who believed that it should be increased by £7 billion a year and almost a quarter who believed the increase should be more than this. Additionally, a third of Conservative MPs and nearly three quarters of Conservative councillors believe the social care budget should be raised by £7 billion or more to plug the funding gap. Three quarters of Conservative councillors, and almost half of all MPs think that social care should be funded by a new collective funding mechanism.

Danny Mortimer, chair of the coalition and chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “Decades of delay and inertia have left the social care system chronically underfunded and in desperate need of reform. As we slowly and cautiously ease out of the Covid emergency we cannot delay this a moment longer. It is clear that the tragedy of Covid-19 has helped to cement a consensus in both parliament and local government that urgent action is needed to fix social care. There is also clear cross-party support for additional resources for the sector and the need long term financial and workforce plan.

“The NHS and social care work side by side, when one service does not work, the other suffers, and the pandemic has served to shine a stark light on how fragile and severely under-resourced the country’s social care system has become. We are now calling on the government to commit to deliver both significant investment and concrete legislative proposals which give social care the future facing reform it so badly needs.”