Social care: Plans to fund improvement in England unveiledon December 1, 2021 at 3:13 pm

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The government sets out how it plans to spend some of the cash raised by its new health tax.

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Image source, Getty Images

The government has unveiled how it plans to spend some of its planned tax hike to improve social care in England.

Over the next three years, £300m will be allocated for housing support, with £150m for new technology to help carers.

An additional £500m will be put towards improving training and qualifications for staff.

Labour said the plans “fall woefully short of the mark” and would not solve an immediate crisis in the sector.

The spending plans have been detailed in a new long-term strategy paper for improving care services over the next decade.

They will be paid for using money from a planned increase to National Insurance (NI), a tax paid by working people, from next April.

The government says the tax rise is expected to raise £12bn a year, which will go initially towards easing pressure on the NHS.

In October, it confirmed it plans to spend £5.4bn on social care over the next three years, with £1.7bn earmarked for improving services.

The remaining £3.6bn will fund a more generous means test for receiving local council support, and a new £86,000 lifetime cap on care fees.

Its its paper published on Wednesday, it confirmed how it intends to spend just under £1bn of this £1.7bn amount on services.

The health department said details of the remaining £700m will be set out “in due course”.

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Analysis box by Alison Holt, social affairs correspondent

There was a lot of hope riding on today’s announcement of government plans for adult social care.

In a care system that has been in crisis for a long time, people wanted a clear vision for the future.

The care minister said she was setting out an ambitious 10-year plan, on an issue that other governments had ducked for too long.

The aim to provide outstanding personalised care which is fair and accessible will be welcomed, but for many in the care sector the actual details of what is proposed are disappointing.

They argue they do nothing to fix the acute problems they face now.

They had hoped much more would be done to attract care workers, as care providers are struggling to recruit enough staff.

Council officials had asked for extra funding over winter because an estimated 400,000 people in England are either waiting for services, or waiting to be assessed.

The paper provides a future vision, but it doesn’t deal with the immediate bumps in the road ahead.

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The proposals also include plans for a new service to help people make repairs and changes to their homes for care needs.

There will also be £5m spent on a pilot scheme to find new ways to inform people about how they can access available support.

Unveiling the plans in the Commons, Health Minister Gillian Keegan said they would give people more choice and support to lead “independent lives”.

She added that successive governments had ducked the challenges posed by the sector, but ministers were now “determined to get it right”.

But shadow social care minister Liz Kendall said the paper lacked a “long-term strategy” to improve carers’ pay and conditions, or recruit additional people into the sector to meet growing demand.

She told MPs that the document would not help clear waiting lists for those waiting to get care support from their local council.

“Hundreds of thousands of older and disabled people are being left without the vital support they need, piling even more pressure on their families and the NHS at the worst possible time,” she added.

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