Social Care - funding White Paper out today‏

Today the Government will publish a White Paper on the funding of social care. The Times previewed the announcement yesterday with an analysis of the rising demand for personal care and the funding implications.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7079475.ece

Some observations in anticipation of the Government proposals:

1. Direct and individual payments will make it worse – there will be no co-operation on skills and training and development of the workforce – direct and individual payments create diseconomies of scale - because councils will not have the capacity to make this happen- they will only be able to deal with the complex high need cases that the private sector don’t want.

2. Scotland’s example of ‘free care’ is misleading. It wasn’t fully explained to those in receipt of care that they would still face ‘hotel’ costs. In principle if someone is in their own home they would have to buy food , fuel etc but the concept of free care to the public means you go into a care home as you would a hospital and pay nothing for your keep – that myth needs dispelling. Its care that’s free not the care home place

3. Social care is a sector that is light years away from any cost/quality performance measurements - as a sector it has been allowed to have spiralling costs with no management information to back up why – not just a volume issue. Most council social services departments don’t know how many people they employ and fail to interpret data on future care needs – it’s a gradual build from low need to high complex need but often they lump future demand into one big basket (exploited by the Tories and lazy on part of ONS / the councils). Smarter data. Smarter targeting of resources – especially into prevention

4. Older people would be less dependent on the state, healthier both physically and mentally , if we hadn’t allowed all the luncheon clubs and day care centres to close! Back to basics – stop ignoring older need across all council services – if they need a gardener to stay in their own home or help with cleaning it’s cheaper to provide than a care home place – though with the demise of DSO’s we’ve outsourced the flexibility to respond ....