Opinion: ‘I welcome the delays to the adult social care funding reforms’

Stef Lunn, Adult Social Care Practice Lead at OLM Systems, has worked in front-line social care roles for over 20 years and has discussed her opinion on Jeremy Hunt’s decision to delay vital social care reforms that he revealed in his fiscal statement earlier this month. 

A seasonal analogy in adult social care 

The current state of the social care sector resembles the peculiar way flowers and plants are currently acting. I’m not an expert gardener, but I have noticed the strange behavior of plants this year.

Whilst walking during a late November afternoon, it’s lovely to see flowers in bloom at, what can be, a dreary time of year. It does, however, cause me to wonder what vital part of their lifecycle might be neglected with limited resources being spent on buds and flowers. I worry that the plants’ bodies and roots are being depleted at a time when they ought to be replenished.

Making best use of finite resources is foremost in many people’s minds at present, following Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn statement last week.

In this article I will contend that, like the confused plants in my garden this year, adult social care has been asked to over-reach itself. Compelled to offer metaphorical blossom and fruit, leaving insufficient resources to support the core of the plant. Whilst there is much to be concerned about in the coming months and years, there is at least, recognition that consolidating support to those who need it most must be the focus. Each of us involved in social care delivery should concentrate on nourishing the essential elements.

Social care in the Autumn statement 

I’ve worked in and around adult social care for 20 years, performing in roles as a social worker, manager, support worker, lecturer, trainer, project manager and, at the moment, IT system consultant.

From November 2020 to June 2022, I was employed as a social worker in a local authority disability transitions team, where the challenges of finding adequate care for the people who need it seemed more acute than I can ever recall.

Whilst legislation has granted more rights and greater expectations for disadvantaged groups, resourcing has not kept pace.

Two examples illustrate this well:

Carers’ rights, recognized but not fulfilled: The invaluable role of family and friends who provide essential care to their loved ones has been increasingly recognized and their right to support improved over the past 30 years – but crucial services to support their wellbeing have been cut.

Holistic assessments, unmet needs: Since the Care Act 2014 came into force, practitioners have been prompted to explore strengths, barriers and challenges across a person’s life as part of the focus on wellbeing. However, they can only usually respond to needs which pose an immediate risk of harm.

The adult social care reforms which had been planned for October 2023 (Build back better: Our Plan for Health and Social Care, published September 2021) followed a similar pattern. The policy promised to confer greater protections on people using essential care services. The much heralded ‘care cap’ would have placed a limit on the amount that individuals need spend on basic care, whilst reducing the funds available to pay for such services; as more generous means tests would have seen councils meeting a higher proportion of the overall care bill.

I fully accept that the current means testing system, which has remained largely unreformed in my working memory, is well overdue for reform.  That said, with the current crisis in staff recruitment and retention, it seems sensible to prioritise those measures which can ensure basic services and public safety, over reforms which don’t directly improve care delivery.

Like many, I have deep misgivings about whose interests will be best served by the decisions described as ‘eye-watering’ even by the chancellor himself, however I welcome the delays to the adult social care funding reforms and find myself in good company. Both the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Council Councils Network (CNN) had called for this measure to be delayed, citing financial and workforce pressures. I must agree with the CCN and LGA; it is difficult to see how adding 100,000+ assessments and a new set of funding processes to the existing backlog of work, would have been either manageable or helpful at this difficult time.

Playing our part 

Social care is a largely hidden system which touches only a small proportion of people at difficult points in their lives. The pandemic and its aftermath shone a bright but fading spotlight on some aspects of it.

The whole system is struggling under the weight of meeting a broad range of promises made by successive political leaders. I would argue that those of us working to support people through these challenges must focus on shoring up the core services that make the biggest difference to their safety and wellbeing.

For us here at OLM, that means doing all we can to make the job easier for practitioners and their managers. Providing systems which are intuitive, where information can be recorded once but used again where it is needed, where different professionals can share information easily, all of which frees up time. Time for professionals to do their core job, working directly with people to deliver a trusted and reliable care service.

Photo by Stef Lunn and Ben White