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October 13, 2024
Care for elderly and disabled people has effectively been downgraded to protect overstretched NHS budgets, throwing the centrepiece of the Coalition’s reforms into doubt, a committee of MPs has warned.
In a scathing report, the Public Accounts Committee questioned whether an ambitious £5.3 billion project to integrate the NHS in England more closely with the social care system, which is operated by local councils, will work.
Far from bringing the two more closely together, the scheme, known as the Better Care Fund, could end up heaping extra pressure on the already cash-starved social care system, the committee concluded.
Yet, at the same time, it is also unlikely to save the NHS the £532,000, predicted by the Government, by reducing emergency hospital admissions.
The report also reveals that such was the acrimony during negotiations last year that councils considered “walking away” from the fund altogether.
Plans to integrate health and social care more closely together by pooling parts of their budgets were initially enthusiastically embraced by both councils and the NHS. Although the Government originally asked local authorities and clinical commissioning to set aside £3.8 billion between for the plans, they far exceeded the target agreeing to pool £5.3 billion.
But the plans hit the buffers in April last year when it emerged that the two sides were working under different assumptions with the NHS expecting to save £1 billion but council unaware of any such target. It meant the plans submitted by councils had to be torn up and the scheme redesigned with £1 billion of the shared fund now exclusively set aside for the NHS.
Margaret Hodge, chair of the committee, said: “With the redesign of the Fund after April 2014, the priority has shifted from improving local services through integration to protecting NHS resources.
“It appears to the Committee that NHS spending was judged a higher priority than supporting adult social care.”
Margaret Hodge
The committee said they were “not convinced” it was possible to achieve the promised savings for the NHS, adding: “We are concerned that the new focus on reducing emergency admissions and making savings will significantly increase pressure in adult social care services.”
A spokeswoman for the Local Government Association said ministers had “moved the goalposts” because of concerns from the NHS.
“Protection for social care funding now needs to be urgently addressed in a similar way as it has been for the NHS,” she added.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “The £5.3 billion Better Care Fund is the biggest ever national programme to join up health and social care, will help more people to stay at home with dignity and independence, has the potential to cut around 160,000 emergency admissions and get people home from hospital more quickly when they do have to be admitted.”
Article was sourced The Telegraph