Government social care director hints at more cash for green paper

The government has said it is working closely with the Wanless
review of older people’s social care, raising the prospect of
increased funding to deliver the adult care green paper.

Kathryn Hudson, the Department of Health’s director of social care,
said it had forged close links with Sir Derek Wanless’s King’s
Fund-sponsored review.

Wanless is expected to call for a significant injection of public
funding into older people’s services.

Hudson, speaking at a fringe meeting at the Local Government
Association conference, said extra finance had to be based on an
assessment of service demand and assurances that councils were
already being efficient.

She also said the DH would be more prescriptive on adult social
care policy in any follow-up to the green paper.

Hudson said: “In some areas the DH has not gone far enough in
challenging what needs to be done. Some of these things will be
additional to what we’ve set out in [the green paper].”

Speaking alongside Hudson, Commission for Social Care Inspection
chair Denise Platt launched a stinging attack on the quality of
services.

She said: “We have services for people under 20, developments for
older people and bugger all in-between.”

Services to help disabled people or those with mental health
problems or learning difficulties into employment were not
universally available, while provision for ethnic minorities
“lagged far behind” services for other groups, she said.

She also said investment in children’s services would not bring
results unless matched by more funding for mental health and
substance misuse services for adults, given the child protection
implications of parents with these problems.

Platt added that local authority commissioning was “not very good”
while consultation with service users – with the exception of
people with learning difficulties – was poor.