It’s almost time to bid farewell to Boris, the man who pledged in his first speech as PM to “fix the crisis in social care once and for all.”
The crisis in social care isn’t fixed once and for all. Nowhere near. The pandemic shone glaring high beams on everything wrong with the social care sector, and showed up just how much money (waaaay more money) was needed to bring it up to scratch. Seven billion, in case you were wondering. Per year.
Six hundred disabled people are joining the waiting list to be assessed for social care every single day. The list currently has 300,000 people on it. That’s 90,000 more people than there were six months ago. A quarter of those people have been waiting for over six months.
That’s a third of a million people waiting for help with dressing, undressing, toileting, bathing, eating and drinking, getting up, or in and out of bed, taking medication, and possibly (a nice to have for many) getting out and about a little bit.
Can you imagine a life where not only can you not do these things, but where nobody is there to help you do those things? Can you imagine, not only the isolation, fear and depression that go with a lack of support to undertake the basics of living, but the physical risks that go with needing such care and having none?
Social care is supposed to be about living independently, with dignity. It is supposed to be about more than just survival. But even survival is out of reach for obscene numbers of people.
By November, there will be 400,000 people waiting for a care assessment. That’s double the total a year ago.
I know of far too many people who share carers, unable to have the care they need for the amount of time they need, but unwilling to watch friends go without any care at all.
Last week, the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee released a report about long-term funding for social care. It recognises the big issues – the huge waiting lists, the lack of staff for assessments and care delivery, and the spiralling costs. It also, significantly, thinks the Government may have got its sums drastically wrong in the first place.
The Government is introducing something called the Health and Social Care Levy next year to inject extra cash into the sector. But most of this will go to the NHS, and the sums forecast take no account of cost pressures in the sector, even before the cost of living crisis started to bite earlier this year.
The Committee is concerned that the pennies destined for the pot are just that – pennies, barely touching the sides. It wants to see the Government allocate additional funding. It wants to see the Government not pitting health and social care against each other, like some flailing MMA match, the public round the ring clapping for carers, as competing managers slug the budgets out of each other, pound for pound, eye for eye.
The Committee says the Government should be “under no illusions that it has come close to rescuing social care, and needs to be open with the public that there is a long way to go.” Too right. And speaking of illusions, Boris is about to do his disappearing act, the promised social care reforms under his tenure nothing but smoke and mirrors.
We’ll have to wait and see whether Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak can amaze us all by pulling a seven billion pound rabbit out of the social care hat, or whether they will, like Boris, end up a rabbit caught out in the headlights.
Anna Morell works for Disability Rights UK – the UK’s leading organisation led by, run by, and working for Disabled people. It works with Disabled People’s Organisations and Government across the UK to influence regional and national change for better rights, benefits, quality of life and economic opportunities for Disabled people.
