Government must stop treating social care as a ‘Cinderella service’, company warns

Following Jeremy Hunt’s fiscal statement, individuals involved in social care believe the government needs to prioritise the sector rather than ‘sticking plasters’ on its problems.

This morning UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivered his fiscal statement in which he announced millions will pay more in tax and energy bills to help suppress rising costs.

As part of his announcement, Mr Hunt stated the ‘care cap’, which was due to be enforced by October 2023, will be delayed by two years due to authorities not being able to afford it.

The plan was to cap the amount anyone in England will need to spend on care costs to £86K, however this won’t be in place until 2025.

Responding to the Chancellor’s announcement, Mario Zuccaro, Founder of Oysta, a UK care tech company, said: ‘The care cap was a welcome policy idea to make the costs between those who self-fund and those who are funded fairer, but the reality is that it is unaffordable for local authorities – and will be until we have widespread reforms in social care which increase productivity such as the use of technology and data as well as reallocating money from other areas of public spending.’

Although Mr Hunt has delayed the care cap, he has announced a package for social care that includes £1bn grant funding set for 2023/24 and a further £1.7bn for 2024/25.

However, according to Mr Zuccaro, this isn’t good enough.

He said, ‘Whilst the £1bn increase in funding for social care is welcome, it roughly works out as an extra £9 per person over 65 in the UK next year.

‘The current policy appears to be to kick the can down the road rather than address the critical reforms which are needed in social care, and this statement has revealed their policy is to use sticking plasters to cover up fundamental problems.

‘The money we allocate to social care is a fraction of the funding given to the NHS because it is not seen as a vote winner. But we will not be able to tackle the huge backlogs, bed blocking and waiting lists until we stop treating social care like a Cinderella service and bring the sector into the 21st century.’

Photo by Josh Appel