4 minute read
Foreword by Professor Martin Green Chief Executive of Care England
from Care Agenda - May
by careengland
Even though the new financial year has arrived, many local authorities still have not announced their fee increases. Every year, we see a repeating pattern of local authorities announcing increases, sometimes in the third quarter of the year. There is absolutely no excuse for this behaviour because local authorities will know their budget settlement, and it is incumbent upon them to make clear what increases they intend to give to care providers. This behaviour is even more reprehensible when you consider that it is often a tactic, they use to enable their own cash flow issues. Yet, they have no understanding of the impact this has on people providing care. Many organisations are being pushed to the brink of insolvency, not only by low fees but also by poor payment practices. It is time the central government took an active role in stamping out this abuse, and it is one way they could immediately help the sector.
The Employment Rights Bill is making fast progress through Parliament, and this will have some significant impacts on the care sector. The Government has an enormous majority of 212 seats, and there is little prospect that they will significantly change the Bill. Faced with this reality, the care sector needs to understand what it can also demand from the government as a prerequisite to having a national approach to employment rights. This also links to the discussions which Baroness Casey is having about a National Care Service, and as a sector, we need to think about what we want as part of this new deal. It seems impossible to contemplate a National Care Service when you have 152 local authorities deciding their own approach to social care and funding it based on what they can afford rather than the true cost of care. With the Employment Rights Bill and the idea of a National Care Service, there must also be a national approach to commissioning and funding the sector. Social
care needs a very clear cost of care model, and local authorities must be required to deliver the appropriate funding so that people can be assured their services are of a high quality and providers can ensure sustainability in their funding. There was a lot of preparatory work done on costs of care in preparation for implementing the deal not proposals, and this should form a start point to develop our model for the future.
Alongside looking at the issues around costs, we should also think about developing new models of care and pressure local authorities to commission for outcomes rather than processes. This will require a significant change in the way local authorities commission care, and we must also see an end to the ridiculous practice of reducing care packages when people get good support and become less dependent. Reducing dependency should be the goal of every care service, and we need to be incentivised, not penalised, for delivering these outcomes.
The abolition of NHS England will also allow us to think about how we can shift resources across health and social care. I believe if we started using the money for people and outcomes rather than focusing on organisations and processes, we would not only get better value for money, but we will deliver better lives for the people we support. The Secretary of State has been bold in his vision for an integrated health and care system, and now the challenge is for him to deliver it and to use money where it can best deliver outcomes rather than locking it in organisations such as the NHS and local authorities.
These are challenging times for the sector, and it is important that we try to remain positive and creative despite the many problems that care providers face daily.
