Overstretched budgets mean that care leaders have been forced to reduce spending on prevention by more than 10% this year, a new survey has revealed.

In the Spring Survey published today by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), researchers have revealed that surging care costs resulted in a national overspend of £774m by councils last year, the highest the overspends have been in a decade.

The survey outlines the three shifts proposed in the Government’s 10 Year Health Plan: ‘hospital to community, treatment to prevention and analogue to digital’, and emphasises that local authorities are ill-equipped to enact these aims due to insufficient resources and funding for adult social care.

ADASS found that councils are under increasing pressure to prioritise immediate needs and people in crisis, requiring them to scale back early care services, whilst faced with a growing demand for more ‘intensive support’.

According to the data, prevention spending has dropped to £1.3bn, reaching its lowest sum since 2021/22, and 74% of Directors of Adult Social Care have minimal confidence that their budgets will enable them to ‘meet their legal duties for prevention and wellbeing’.

The survey also highlights that more local support is required to help unpaid carers, who fill the gaps in adult social care services, ‘often to the detriment of their own health and wellbeing’.

Jess McGregor, ADASS President and Director of Adult Social Care in Camden, said: ‘We shouldn’t have to choose between helping people with complex needs now and preventing others from getting unwell – we need to support people at both ends of the social care spectrum.

‘But without more investment to keep people well and independent at home, we risk undermining the shift towards prevention and neighbourhood health that Wes Streeting, the NHS and this Government are rightly championing.’

Ms McGregor added: ‘It’s vital that adult social care leaders who are well versed in delivering support at the community level are meaningfully involved in decisions about where and how resources for neighbourhood health and care are spent. After all, acute hospitals are not best placed to deliver social care at the neighbourhood level – but councils are.’

Responding to the survey, Cllr David Fothergill, Chairman of the LGA Community Wellbeing Board highlighted the importance of ‘long-term investment’ that will enable councils to ‘plan, recruit and deliver services’ effectively, with the aim of improving public wellbeing and minimising the strain on the NHS.

UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea commented: ‘For years councils were repeatedly starved of funding to deal with the growing problems in social care.’

She added: ‘The sooner there’s a national care service, the better. That will drive up standards and begin to replace the profit-driven system that's failing far too many people, their families and hard-pressed staff.’

Download your free copy of GLL: Transforming Community Health and Wellbeing today to learn more about the importance of prevention.