Earlier this month, Andrew Dilnot set out his proposals for the future funding of social care. The Government now has until 2014 to take action on this report.
It has been widely publicised already but it is worth repeating that the recommendations in the report are that individuals' lifetime contributions towards their social care costs - which are currently potentially unlimited - should be capped, that the means tested threshold above which people are liable for their full care costs should be increased, that national eligibility criteria should be introduced and that all those who enter adulthood with the care and support needs should be eligible for free state support immediately, rather than being subjected to a means test.
We will need to wait to see whether the Government chooses to adopt these recommendations, although the coalition did promise prior to commissioning the report, that once it was in receipt of the report it would waste no further time in moving the future of social care forward. We wait to see whether this will be the case.
In the meantime, local authorities still need to deal with huge social care issues which are happening right now, as they are forced to make increasingly tough choices, because there is simply not enough money.
Some suggest that the NHS reforms will help to ease some of the pain, by bringing about closer integration of social care with the NHS as a result of the Council's Health & Wellbeing Boards having stronger powers. However, this change will not happen overnight, the NHS will struggle with a movement towards the bigger society in a localised care system, let alone the integration of a social care system which has always been viewed as separate and distinct.
Over the past 20 years, there have been similar reports to those of Dilnot recommending reform of social care, but one Government after another has parked them in the long grass because the proposals were either too expensive to implement, likely to prove unpopular with voters, or a combination of both. There remains to be seen whether this Dilnot report will go the same way.
In the meantime, people need to have some clearer answers on the future of social care. There needs to be a big debate over how we are all going to look after and pay for our big society.
For further information contact Louise Crook on 01242 246484 or email:louise.crook@rickerbys.com
