The CSP has backed calls for funding to help millions of older people, people with disabilities and carers who are desperate for better care.
The Care and Support Alliance (CSA) campaign Social Care Can’t Wait is asking the government to give authorities a funding settlement at the Spending Review on 27 October that enables them to stabilise, strengthen and ultimately improve social care across the country.
The CSP, as a member of the CSA, is supporting the call, encouraging members to get involved with the campaign.
Calling the Health and Social Care Select Committee’s recommended increase in annual funding of £3.9bn by 2023-24 a ‘starting point’, the campaign adds that only substantially more money from central Government to local authorities can provide the financial certainty needed to ‘fix social care’.
In a letter to the government, whose signatories include Chief Executive at the CSP Karen Middleton, campaign organisers highlight the need for an additional cash injection, arguing it is needed urgently to address shortfalls in the quality of care currently provided, reverse the decline in access or stop the market retreating to providing only for self-payers.
New research showing longer waiting lists in the most deprived areas is leading to a ‘two-tier’ system, as people who can afford to go private are treated quickly while those who can’t risk their condition deteriorating the more their surgery is delayed, affecting some people’s ability to work and their mental health. It highlighted the need for improved equal access to community rehab services to reduce the pressure on the struggling social care system.
The letter states the additional funding will ‘make or break the reforms which the Government has brought forward. Without substantial extra investment now over the next Spending Review period the Government’s reform agenda will fail.’
Campaigners also raises concerns over the delay to the start of reforms, which are not due to start until 2023.
CSP assistant director Sara Hazzard said, ‘The worsening social care crisis means there is little time left to find urgent workforce and funding solutions.
‘We need to know that the government is ready to do everything possible to ensure that we have the workforce and funding in place to avoid deepening the health and social care inequity, which brings devastating and often avoidable consequences.
‘We are urging our members and all professional bodies and patient organisations to get behind the Social Care Can’t Wait campaign.’
More than 35,000 people have signed the Social Care Can’t Wait petition asking for increased funding for social care in the run up to the Spending Review on 27 October.
CSP members are encouraged to sign the petition and share the link to the web page on social media using the hashtag #SocialCareCantWait.
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