Social care funding should not be merged with NHS, minister says

Описание: Helen Whately said she did not think social care funding should be centralised to mirror the NHS - arguing that local authorities know best what care people need.

Funding social care should not be taken out of the hands of cash-strapped councils and there is no quick fix for the struggling sector, a Government minister has said. In an interview with i, Helen Whately said she did not think social care funding should be centralised to mirror the NHS – arguing that local authorities know best what care people need. She acknowledged there was a “lot of pressure” on councils, but said there “are no easy answers on the funding of social care”. And Ms Whately, who has been responsible for social care intermittently since 2020, said large-scale reforms “take time to make a difference”. It comes as the Government announced it was allocating £20m of a social care reform fund to boost a scheme that helps adults in the care system to live in the community.
Earlier this week, a report by health think-tank The King’s Fund called for funding reforms due to rising costs faced by councils with already squeezed budgets. Ms Whately told i increasing spending on social care had been a “priority”, but pushed back against the suggestion that greater reform of the funding model was needed. “There’s a lot of pressure on the funding of social care and a lot of pressure on local authority budgets, with competing needs, and also more people in need of care,” she said. “That’s one reason why we put extra funding into social care – up to £8.6bn over this year and next to support that extra cost. To me that has been a real priority.” She added that there were “no easy answers on the funding of social care” and said governments “of all colours and over many years have talked about big reforms” to the sector. But she said making it a national system, like the NHS, was not the answer. She added: “I have heard people make all sorts of arguments for ‘let’s do social care differently and combine social care with the NHS’. Actually I am a real supporter of the role local authorities play in social care.

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/no-...

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