Treasury highly unlikely to fund Wanless’s call for a guaranteed free minimum level of service for all older people

The Treasury is examining how a more modest version of the funding proposal put forward by the Wanless social care review may work in practice, Community Care Live heard yesterday.

Julien Forder, who project managed the review, said the Treasury would be highly unlikely to fund Wanless’s call for a care system for older people that provided improved outcomes and a guaranteed free minimum level of service for all.

However, he said: “We are now working on a more modest version of the model and unsurprisingly the Treasury seems more interested in that.”

Under the version under consideration, the system would be geared to producing less ambitious outcomes than proposed by Wanless.

In the same session, Jon Glasby, head of health and social care partnerships at Birmingham University’s Health Services Management Centre, said next year’s comprehensive spending review provided the best opportunity in years to increase social care funding, thanks to Wanless.

But he questioned whether there was sufficient political will or public support for increased investment.

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