Joint fund call for adult care and health

Adult social care and primary health services should be commissioned from a single pot of money by local government-led partnerships, a senior councillor told the conference.

David Rogers, chair of the Local Government Association’s community well-being board, said this would secure an “intelligent and efficient relationship between social care and health”.

He said local area agreements, in which council-led partnerships agree targets with government in return for the freedom to pool resources, should be the model adopted to integrate health and social care in the forthcoming white paper.

This should be backed up by a duty on public bodies to co-operate to promote the well-being of adults  and integrated inspection regimes for health and social care.

But he warned that social care still faced the danger of marginalisation in children’s and adult services, with Ofsted set to take over the inspection of social care and the government’s continuing emphasis on the NHS.