1Introduction
1.In one of our longest inquiries this Parliament, we have spent the last four months looking at adult social care. The length and depth of our inquiry reflected both the importance of social care provided by local authorities in supporting the most vulnerable people and their carers, and also the repeated and mounting concerns of the sector about the state of social care finances and its consequences both for those who receive services and for the NHS.
2.Having heard powerful evidence from witnesses from all parts of the sector, including people who receive council-funded social care services and from carers, we have decided to publish this interim report which calls on the Government to provide additional funding for adult social care in the Budget on 8 March and examines why we believe that the Government’s funding commitments are not enough. The Government has said that “money is not the only answer” to the challenges facing social care and has highlighted the role of better integration of health and social care in improving outcomes and saving money1 and we will examine the evidence for this in our final report.
3.Our final report, which we expect to publish in the coming weeks, will also cover the implications of current funding levels for the sufficiency and quality of adult social care services, individuals and their families, carers, the care market, care providers, the care workforce and the NHS. It will also consider and make recommendations on the medium- and long-term funding of adult social care and the structural challenges presented by the current configuration of the system.
1 Department for Communities and Local Government and the Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP, Oral statement to Parliament: Provisional local government finance settlement 2017 to 2018, 15 December 2016
3 March 2017