A report from The Public Accounts Committee has warned that stronger measures are needed to safeguard the interests of adults receiving personal budgets for social care.

The report expresses concern saying: "We are not assured that local authorities can fully personalise care while seeking to save money, and are concerned that users' outcomes will be adversely affected.”

The report explores personal budgets; sums of money allocated by a local authority to service users to be spent on services to meet their care needs.

They can be managed on behalf of users by the authority or a third party, or given to users as direct payments to manage themselves.

From April 2015, the Care Act requires that all users receive personal budgets but the Committee has today expressed concern that some people with personal budgets ‘may not be receiving care that is genuinely personalised’.

The report states that the Department of Health also questions whether all those counted by local authorities as having a personal budget do actually have genuine control over the services they receive.

The report has warned that although some groups of users are more capable of trying new approaches to care, others need greater support, including the elderly, those in residential care, the mentally ill and those with learning disabilities.

The Committee found in their report that adults who receive social care paid for by their local authority ‘are not yet getting the support they need consistently in order to get the most out of personalising their care’.

The Committee calls for greater clarity on how local authorities can implement personal budgets to maximise benefits to users.

The report also shares local authorities' concerns that funding cuts and wage pressures ‘will make it hard to fulfil their Care Act obligations’.

Among its other findings, the Committee highlights the fragility of the social care market, warning of ‘a real threat’ that many care providers will not survive.

The Committee calls on the Department of Health to set out clearly to local authorities and providers ‘what high-quality and proportionate support looks like’ and how much it costs, and recommends a range of analytical and other measures to safeguard users' interests and the social care market.

Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the PAC, said today: "The need for adult social care is increasing but in recent years the amount spent on such care by English local authorities has fallen in real terms.

“Against this backdrop there are clearly risks in pursuing new approaches to providing care. Personal budgets have great potential but the interests of users are paramount and must be protected.

“It is vital people receiving care do so through the form of personal budget that best suits their circumstances. They should also be supported to make best use of it.

 
“In this time of real funding pressures, central government must work with local authorities to safeguard the market for social care, including assessing the impact of the National Living Wage and other factors on provision.

“The Department of Health and its partners must also show they are learning from available evidence and data so that care users can be confident of getting best value from the resources available."