Age UK has published a damning report on the state of funding for national social care services.
The charity’s social care ‘score card’ shows that despite rising demand the amount spent on social care services for older people has fallen nationally by £1.1 billion (14.4%) since 2010/11.
In 2010/11, 12.4% of all people aged 65 or over received social care, amounting to 1,230,625 people. Today, that figure has dropped to 9.1% or 849,280 people.
Previous research by Age UK has showed that 900,000 older people between 65 and 89 have unmet needs for social care.
The ‘score card’ shows that between 2010/11 and 2013/14 spend on day care fell by over £113 million and day care places plummeted by 66.9% from 178,700 to 59,125.
Meals on wheels is another hard-hit service. Since 2010/11, the number of people receiving meals on wheels has plunged by 63.7% from 81,460 29,560 people.
Commenting on the report’s findings, Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK said: “This devastating scorecard speaks for itself and it lays bare the fact that our State funded social care system is in calamitous, quite rapid decline.
“The more preventive services like meals on wheels and day care are being especially hard hit, leaving the system increasingly the preserve of older people in the most acute need, storing up big problems for the future.”
Ms Abrahams also emphasised the strain that a poorly funded social care system has on the NHS: “Until recently the impact of the decline in social care has been relatively hidden, but social care is a crucial pressure valve for the NHS and the evidence of what happens when it is too weak to fulfil that function is clear for us all to see.
“So policymakers owe it to the public, older people especially, to confront the crisis in social care and its consequences. Above all, this scorecard makes clear that for any policymaker to acknowledge the need for investment in the NHS while omitting to mention social care is not good enough and will ultimately not solve the problems facing the NHS either.”
