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Social care 360
Social care 360
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Author(s):
- Bottery, Simon, author
Jefferies, Danielle, author - Contributor(s):
- King's Fund (London, England), issuing body.
- Publication:
- [London, England] : The King's Fund, March 2022
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- COVID-19 -- economics
Social Welfare -- economics
Social Welfare -- trends
Social Work -- economics
Social Work -- trends
State Medicine
United Kingdom - Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- This year’s Social care 360 includes data from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021, encompassing both the first and second waves of the Covid-19 pandemic. Several of the trends show marked changes from previous years. One of these is clearly related to the pandemic. (1) Public expenditure on social care increased sharply, as the government channelled money into the sector to help fund the additional costs of Covid-19. In others, Covid-19 is likely to have been involved but other factors might also have played a role. (2) New requests for support from older people to local authorities went down, most likely as people avoided contact with formal care services, but requests for support from working-age adults increased. (3) Overall, the number receiving formal long-term care services in fact went up. The Covid-19 pandemic prompted action from government. In addition to extra money, Covid-19 brought about belated recognition by central government about the need for greater oversight of adult social care. As a result, important legislation has been introduced that will improve data collection and analysis in the sector and give the Care Quality Commission an assurance function with local government commissioning of social care. However, the government’s reform agenda has focused on areas not really affected by Covid-19, with reforms to address the ‘catastrophic’ care costs that some individuals face in their lifetimes and reform of the means test announced in a White Paper published in December 2021. Even planned reforms to the provider market, aimed at ensuring that local authorities pay providers a ‘fair cost of care’ are primarily driven by the requirements of introducing a cap on care costs. While these reforms are welcome, they do little to tackle the other fundamental problems in adult social care, including unmet need, underfunding and workforce, which were highlighted by the pandemic. These remain in urgent need of a response, which the government’s social care White Paper largely failed to provide.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (45 pages))
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918471185606676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918471185606676