Government announces additional £2 billion Social Care Grant

In a policy paper published in February 2023 it was announced that the government understands that social care is a significant part of local authority spending, and has made the grants available to enable local authorities to make positive reform to adult social care including hospital discharge, social care wait times, and workforce pressures within the sector.

Concerns have been expressed by those representing senior social workers that the amount is inadequate to make a real difference to social care services. Whilst the additional funding has been welcomed, Cathie Williams, Chief Executive of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services said

"It will help councils to reduce what could have been additional cuts to help deliver savings needed next year and in that context is welcome, but people should be under no illusion that it will address the vast amount of unmet, under met and wrongly met needs or really establish social care as the essential service that we all depend on to live, to work and to care.”

Cllr James Jamieson, Local Government Association Chairman reiterated Cathie's views when he said

“Underlying and existing pressures remain for councils and many still face significant challenges when setting their budgets and trying to protect services from cutbacks.”

There is still a huge amount of pressure on the workforce of the social care sector. Workforce Intelligence wrote a comprehensive analysis of the adult social care workforce in England which outlined that while there was a 0.3% increase in total roles within the sector, the was a huge 3% drop in roles being filled in the 2021/22 period. The total of vacant posts has increased by 52% since 2020/21.

It was also uncovered that the average wait time for assessments was a whopping 8 weeks, which has been attributed to staff shortages. The Liberal Democrats have called for higher pay for social care staff, identifying that chronic staff shortages are leading to patients being left in hospital waiting for social care, which in turn is contributing to record waiting times for A&E. “We need these social care workers,” said the party’s leader Ed Davey. “They've never been valued enough.”

The government expects local authorities to comply with the grant conditions for the Discharge Funding and Adult Social Care Market Sustainability and Improvement Funding, including reporting on performance which will give them a clearer understanding of the needs of the sector.

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