Social care fares better than most in the Spending Review

While the majority of public sector services had to take onboard the reality of 7.1% of cuts – per year for 4 years – from their budget, the social care sector emerged from last week’s spending review £2bn better off as the Government recognised our ageing population as posing exceptional circumstances that could not have justified less funding, no matter what the state of the national debt.

The extra £2bn was announced very early on in Chancellor George Osborne’s speech, along with a pupil premium and free hours of care for disadvantaged two-year-olds, as clearly the development he would have liked the media to report on before the difficult cuts to come for other services were detailed. ‘It is a hard road, but it leads to a better future,’ he had begun, but an extra £1bn in grant funding for social care together with an extra £1bn for ‘joint working’ with the NHS – to be phased in, like the cuts, over four years – did not seem to picture that road in as harsh a light as some may have feared (although the sector will no doubt claim the road is already littered with its own pressing problems).

As usual though the fallout from a major Government speech is rarely black and white. Indeed, in this case it seems to have led to the broadest range of speculative readings the anxious public have had to ingest since the turbulent days of the late 1970s. Criticisms range from economic doom-saying, as far as the country’s poorest is concerned, with warnings of the potential of a double-dip recession and an equal amount of private sector job losses, to the Government’s claim that private sector enterprise and development will make up for frontline redundancies, even to the point of seeing unemployment fall. Other media voices feel more secure in this ‘age of austerity’ and claim the negative effects of cuts are being completely over-estimated and will not result in any major poverty to justify the protests and trade union actions being predicted.

Though the financial ramifications from the broader public sector’s affects upon the elderly are complex, it is probable the clamour of care providers would have been louder than any other had the plight of those needing care gone unnoticed. Despite this, charities like the Alzheimer’s Society, who have long campaigned for the recognition of a changing demographic as one of the most serious issues facing the UK, have refused to suspend judgement and criticised the Coalition for not providing enough funds to meet the needs of the growing number of dementia sufferers. The failure to ringfence said expenditure may also cause some alarm bells if, as some have speculated, local authorities may end up misusing funds if their priorities conflict with what Central Government expects of them.

Whatever the merits of the review in the long-term, however, now that care provision is so clearly a leading issue in UK politics it is unlikely the Government will successfully avoid the consequences of failing to improve it, if this positive move does prove to be flawed because of difficult economic circumstances.