Charities, care providers and campaigners have made a final plea to David Cameron to seize the opportunity to transform the provision of care for the elderly or leave families “picking up the pieces of our inadequate system”.
They urge him not to “duck” the issue of funding when he publishes the delayed White Paper on social care this month.
Ministers are so divided over the issue of funding that they have decided to leave it out of the White Paper, and instead address it in a “progress report” to be published alongside. But campaigners fear that the progress report will reiterate all the options and say that more consultation is needed, so the issue will be put on hold once again.
Organisations ranging from Saga to local authorities, who assess and pay for care to companies who provide the services, have agreed a common position on reform and urged the Prime Minister to take a decision.
The organisations demand clarity on what families will be required to pay for and what the State will fund. They also want a national system to replace the lottery of who is entitled to what care.
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The Dilnot Commission, commissioned by the Government, called for a cap on the lifetime contributions of individuals towards social care costs of about £35,000, so that families could plan for their old age and avoid the “catastrophic costs” of years of expensive residential care for conditions such as dementia.
The Times has learnt that the Department of Health wants the “progress report” to accept the Dilnot recommendations in principle, and set out a new structure of funding that makes clear who will pay for what, even if the final decision on where the threshold is set waits until the next spending round. However, this has been greeted with suspicion in the Treasury, which does not want to have its hands tied before the spending round.
Now Downing Street is wavering, fearful that anything that appears to help middle-class families to hold on to their homes rather than pay for care will look like the Government is helping the rich. The organisations, in a final submission to the Government, say that the Dilnot Commission has provided a framework for change and there is an unprecedented degree of consensus now among providers, professionals, politicians, user groups and charities to accept it in principle.
Ros Altmann, director general of Saga, said: “We now call on the Government to be bold, not to duck this difficult issue and to address the unfairness of the current care funding system. This is about families and communities who are having to pick up the pieces of our inadequate system.”
Dr Altmann wants as many people as possible to contact their MPs in the next fortnight to express their concern.
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Downing Street officials are scrabbling around, trying to find measures to put into the White Paper and a draft Bill that has been promised for this parliamentary session.
With funding no longer part of the paper, it will instead contain plans to simplify the social care law. This is comprised of 40 statutes and thousands of pages of guidance. Likely changes are the right of carers to have an assessment of their support needs, a duty on councils to investigate abuse and neglect of adults, and moves towards “direct payments”, which would allow people to design their care packages.