Council leaders are warning the government’s efforts to stop people having to cash in their homes to pay for care are under threat due to insufficient funding.
The Government had previously promised to provide councils with £5.6bn between April 2016 and March 2021 to implement reforms in the Care Act.
However, new figures from the Department for Health show that this funding commitment has reduced by nearly 12%. The Local Government Association (LGA) said this reduction was ‘short-sighted’ given the care system is already ‘chronically under-funded’.
Chair of the LGA’s community wellbeing board, Cllr Izzi Seccombe, said: ‘This is another potential pressure at a time when councils are already under such strain from challenging cuts that could see services tip into failure.
'We are already having to divert funding from other services to fund social care. It would be an absolute tragedy if insufficient funding jeopardised these desperately-needed changes.’
