Social care reforms ‘doomed to fail’ unless Government measures true cost of inaction

Too much emphasis is put on the cost of change and not enough attention is given to the human and financial cost of not acting on social care issues, a new report from a group of MPS says.

The cross-party Health and Social Care Committee has warned that the Government must measure the true cost of inaction on social care saying that without this, future reforms – such as those to come out of the ongoing Casey Commission – will be doomed to failure.

The Committee’s report cites the lack of official data held by the Government relating to social care and says it believes that the Government does not know what the potential monetary benefits of a reformed system might be and cannot assess which social care reform interventions would result in the highest returns.

MPs fear that reforms will continue to be frustrated by concerns about the expense, unless there is a robust understanding at the centre of government of the cost of doing nothing. They warn that ignoring the cost of the status quo would leave us all continuing to pay “a high price for a failing system”.

MPs want the Government to commission research to fully quantify the cost of continued inaction and call on it to publish data including an annual assessment of the level of unmet care needs for adults, as well as an annually published official estimate detailing how much delayed discharges are costing the NHS.

The Committee’s report sets out how the existing adult social care (ASC) system is not meeting the needs of the population and “the Government and taxpayers are currently paying £32 billion a year for a broken system”.

MPs highlight that this is despite the enormous contribution by unpaid carers, who provide care worth £184 billion a year, "equivalent to a second NHS", and who are bearing the highest cost from failures to reform adult social care.

The broken system is also straining local authorities’ budgets with an increasingly high proportion of spending on adult social care, which MPs state is crowding out spending on other services, such as fixing potholes, keeping libraries open and providing youth services.

MPs also point to the impact of the status quo on the NHS and say that social care reform is an integral part of NHS reforms and cannot be a separate process. The Committee urges Baroness Casey, in her first report, to set out the immediate steps that the Government needs to take to ensure the adult social care sector can play its vital part in the three shifts for NHS reform.

Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, Layla Moran MP, said successive governments have shied away from implementing meaningful reforms to the social care system.

“This is an active choice that is no longer tenable. We are living with a broken social care system. It is not providing adequate care to the people who need it, it is creating ever increasing costs for local authorities and the NHS, and it is putting unsustainable pressure on unpaid carers, many of whom have to leave work to care for loved ones. Meanwhile, many paid carers are living in poverty and needing state support in the form of Universal Credit.

“Inaction, and the current state of affairs, are harming those who need care, the people delivering care, the NHS, local government, the Treasury, and the economy.”

Speaking in response to the report, Cllr David Fothergill, Chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community and Wellbeing Board, said the Government must account for this in its decisions on implementing the Casey Commission recommendations.

“These costs impact councils, providers, the wider sector and – most important of all - people who draw on adult social care.

“This intervention comes at a helpful time, just as the Commission gets underway, and we support many of the recommendations it makes, especially around workforce and pay, unpaid carers, overall funding and stability.

“This needs to be accompanied by an acceleration in the pace of change – while it’s right not to rush this – ten years is an incredibly long time to wait for the reform.”