Who cares?
The future funding of adult social care remains uncharted territory but one thing is clear: the existing system is unsustainable.
Over 2,000 charities provide community and social care services; all of which face unprecedented challenges. Whichever government is elected, neither the state nor the elderly and disabled can manage without them. The sector’s unique ability to respond to local and specific needs is already a vital element of care delivery.
So it is perhaps not surprising that numerous care charities have provided detailed and constructive responses to the government’s consultation on the green paper, Shaping the Future of Care Together, which closed in November 2009. All we can hope for now is a clearer balance between means-testing, insurance-based schemes or some kind of partnership model detailed in the white paper due out this month. Or as Lynne Berry puts it (see this issue's Viewpoint), ‘we need a fair, simple and well-funded system with an emphasis on preventative services, which allows every older person to maintain their well-being’.
One only has to read the consultation response from Help the Aged and Age Concern to observe how charities provide a crucial perspective on what needs doing and where. The charity questions how the integration of care and benefits systems (e.g. drawing attendance allowance into the funding stream for care and support) will work in practice, and the lack of detail on care costs.
This type of questioning and campaigning must be part of any dialogue in joined-up care provision between the sector and the state. Of course there is a huge opportunity for charities to deliver more provision, but the commissioning or grant-making environment has got to be right for the partnership to work. The Social Investment Bank – once appropriately capitalised – will also have a key role in supporting effective care provision where it is most needed.
It is encouraging to hear that the incumbent Care Services minister, Phil Hope, sees the sector’s role as ‘critical’ in providing ‘fair simple and affordable care to everyone that needs it’. He confirmed to Caritas: ‘On 19 February we held a major conference to discuss the future of care services with key charities, and we will continue to work closely with them as we set out the blueprint for the National Care Service.’
There is an opportunity for the sector, working with the state and the beneficiaries of care services to ensure that society’s older and disabled people get the best care, and that its provision is funded in a fair and sustainable manner. Even better – it can transform the perception of care provision as something positive, as a means of demonstrating how society can give back, rather than a demographic time bomb that needs fixing.
Author: Clarissa Dann
Clarissa Dann was the editor of Caritas as well as an HR and management online service,he People Bulletin until July 2011.
She is now the editor of the specialist trade finance magazine, Trade and Forfaiting Review which can be viewed at www.tfreview.com but does write on charity finance and investment from time to time.
Clarissa has a background in legal and professional publishing, as well as business journalism and holds an MBA from
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