27/11/06 - Call for Government to put more money into social care

Care providers and people who receive care services in the North of England are petitioning the Government to put more money into social care.

They are also petitioning to give full consideration to the case made last week by the Local Government Association.

A petition of 1,930 care providers and the vulnerable people to whom they provide care has been co-ordinated by the Independent Care Group (ICG) across York and North Yorkshire. It is a grass roots call on the Government to listen to the need to increase funding to local authorities and to recognise the impending demographic time bomb which means that more people than ever will need social care.

A week ago the Local Government Association published its Autumn Report which gave a warning that up to 370,000 vulnerable elderly people would lose vital social services if the Government didn’t increase its funding.

This was immediately dismissed by the local government minister Phil Woolas as ‘untrue and unhelpful’. Mr Woolas went further and said ‘These claims tell you more about the LGA’s perennial tactics in bidding for more money, than they do about what is happening on the ground.’

Mike Padgham, Chair of the ICG which represents care providers in York and North Yorkshire, says this week ‘We are very disappointed with the response of the Minster and call on Phil Woolas to meet with us if he would like to know what is happening ‘on the ground’. We support whole-heartedly the LGA’s call on the Government for more money to help the growing number of vulnerable people in the community and we would like to see this money ring-fenced.

The majority of care in our area is given by independent care providers, some of whom have up to 80% of their clients publicly funded. The number of elderly people who need help is growing year on year and local authorities are struggling to meet the increasing amount of money needed to pay for it.

‘In our own area the local authorities have had to raise or tighten the eligibility criteria which determine how many people can receive help. If we want more concrete proof of this we need only to look to the Commission for Social Care Report Time to Care; an overview of home care services for older people in England published last month.’

In Time to Care the CSCI states: ‘Home care services are currently very constrained. Providers struggle to recruit appropriately trained staff.

Preventative services that would help people remain living in their own homes for as long as possible are under-developed. Councils cut simple practical services. High eligibility thresholds result in services that concentrate only on people who need more intensive packages of care. It is thus becoming clear that the service needs more resources.’

The report also shows that while people are overwhelmingly positive about their individual care workers, they often experience their services as ‘rushed’. It is quite common for services to be delivered in 15 minute slots, and also very common for care workers to have heavy workloads and insufficient time to travel between visits – and this is the experience that we are seeing locally. As the CSCI report states, the result is that there is too little time for a relationship to form between the care worker and the individual receiving the service – even though research shows that it is this relationship that is the key to well being.

Crucially this is the sort of early intervention that enables people to stay longer in their own homes and can save the NHS money.

Care workers who have earned a National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) do not find a task based ’15 minute slot’ model of service satisfying work nor does the model make the best use of their hard earned skills.

In January this year Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, Chair of the LGA warned Phil Woolas that across the country ‘services were being rationed’ for the infirm and elderly.

In March the Wanless Report stated that the number of older people needing help will expand by 50% over the next 20 years. Spending on helping them should rise from around £10bn a year now to around £30bn in 2026. Sir Derek Wanless suggested a 'partnership' system which should be the basis for a more wide-ranging and better way of looking after the frail and elderly. It would provide care at home for people, including 450,000 who get nothing now.

Mike Padgham of ICG adds ‘Social care is the responsibility of local authorities. It must be to be funded properly by the Government. An ever growing number of people are needing help to remain in their own homes – elderly and disabled – and some people need the 24 hour a day care provided in a care home. People in our area have gathered signatures in order to show the Government that there is a call from the grass roots in communities like ours – not to dismiss this issue of funding as ‘a tactic by the LGA’ but – to recognise that there is a real problem for vulnerable people here and it needs to be addressed before it gets any worse.

The ICG is held its annual Care Conference on Wednesday (22nd November) at York Racecourse

Source : Care and Health