Kari Gerstheimer is Chief Executive and founder of legal rights organisation Access Social Care (Image: Kari Gerstheimer)
Social care is the support older people, disabled people and carers receive in their own home, a care home or the community. It enables people to live in dignity, with the people they love, doing the things that matter to them.
We will all need social care at some point, either for ourselves or for a loved one.
But the last survey of directors of adult social services told us a staggering 90% of local councils lack confidence they will meet their statutory duties to provide care this year.
Every day millions of people go without the social care they need. The impact on the lives of the people we support is devastating.
The social care sector estimates there is an £8.4 billion funding gap for social care every year.
The last administration said it was adequately funding social care, but refused to publish the maths. This reality gap means government transparency has never been more needed.
Since 2021, Access Social Care lawyers have been using freedom of information requests to try to find out how government has determined social care is sufficiently funded.
But the Treasury, Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Housing and Communities & Local Government have blocked us at every turn.
A series of live cases are now making their way through the Information Tribunal.
The new administration has been contacted by Access Social Care to request a change in approach, but to date there has been no change of direction.
If government is so sure it is adequately funding social care, why go to such lengths to prevent transparency?
It’s only through openness and transparency, that we’ll break the impasse on social care funding that has paralysed reform for decades.
This week we and others across the sector are writing to government to ask for three things:
Firstly for government be open and transparent about how it calculates sufficiency of funding for adult social care.
Secondly, to take immediate action in the Local Government settlement to prevent the systemic collapse of social care services.
And thirdly to share equality impact information so that civil society can work with the Government to reduce health and social care inequalities.
It’s time for actions, not words.
Government actions could improve the lives of millions of older people, disabled people and carers.