£2.9Bn Funding Gap for UK Care Homes May Cause Half to Close

As I prepare to speak at a program at the University of Leeds this week on comparative social care systems and legal policies, a headline in The Guardian caught my eye: “Half of UK Care Homes Will Close Unless £2.9bn Funding Gap Is Plugged, Warn Charities.”  The Guardian reports:

In a joint letter, 15 social care and older people’s groups urge Osborne to use his spending review on Wednesday to plug a funding gap that they say will hit £2.9bn by 2020. They warn that social care in England, already suffering from cuts imposed under the coalition, will be close to collapse unless money is found to rebuild support for the 883,000 older and disabled people who depend on personal care services in their homes.

 

[Chancellor of the Exchequer] Osborne has already decided to use his overview of public finances to give town halls the power to raise council tax by up to 2% to fund social care, in a move that could raise up to £2bn for the hard-pressed sector. However, the signatories of the letter, such as Age UK and the Alzheimer’s Society, want him to commit more central government funding to social care.

 

The looming £2.9bn gap “can no longer be ignored”, the letter says. “Up to 50% of the care home market will become financially unviable and care homes will start to close their doors,” it adds. “Seventy-four per cent of domiciliary home-care providers who work with local councils have said that they will have to reduce the amount of publicly funded care they provide. If no action is taken, it is estimated that this would affect half of all of the people and their families who rely on these vital services.”

 

Osborne’s endorsement of a hypothecated local tax to boost social care comes after intense lobbying behind the scenes and public warnings from bodies such as the King’s Fund health thinktank.

The authors warn the “NHS will be overwhelmed by frail elderly people” in search of care. I was struck by implications that without funding reallocation, England will face staggering hordes of near zombies.  There is irony in this imagery, of course, because we spend a heck of a lot of real money on best-selling books, movies and top-rated television shows about fictional zombies, while failing to come to terms with the funding needs for real people.  See e.g., this estimate that “Zombies Are Worth Over $5 billion to Economy.”