Social care services 'unsustainable' -ADASS

Adult social care services in England will soon be 'unsustainable' if the current budgetary pressures continue and additional new money is not injected into local social care economies, according to the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services' annual budget survey.

ADASS President David Pearson issued a statement last week saying that despite the

"very welcome help adult social care has received from central government, and the faith and finance that local councillors have invested in us as well" the cash invested in services will reduce by a further 1.9% in 2014-15: a sum equivalent to £266 million.

This represents a third year of cash reductions. The fall in spend has been exacerbated by the rise in numbers of people looking for support. A fact which was confirmed in March this year by the National Audit Office. The net result is that local authority social service departments have been forced to make savings of26 percent in their budgets - the equivalent of £3.53 billion over the last four years.

There will be additional substantial financial burdens as a result of implementing the Care Act.; implementing the Dilnot proposals, and responding to the Supreme Court judgement on Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.

Mr Pearson concluded: "Let nobody underestimate how hard we have all worked - adult social services departments alongside central and local government politicians - to minimise the damage that our current austerity might do to the vulnerable people for whom we have responsibilities.

"Nor how policy makers and politicians might be putting too much faith in the benefits of integration with the NHS to help prevent this impending unsustainability. Joining up care and health services is the right thing to do. But any financial benefits are likely to be far outstripped by the sheer scale of the reductions in funding.

"It is not directors' job, but that of the country as a whole and its politicians, to debate how much, in times of the most severe adversity, vulnerable people should be protected from the consequences of that adversity by the introduction of new money into social care. I hope this survey will help get that debate started; fuel that debate, and help the people engaged in it reach a fair and humane decision."