Cuts to adult social care to worsen next year, warns Adass

Cuts to adult social care are set to get worse in 2012-13 following big reductions in funding this year, Association of Directors of Adult Social Services president Peter Hay warned today.

He said a straw poll of directors in England had revealed that cuts to adult care next year would be slightly more than the £1bn taken out of budgets this year.

Hay said the government must respond quickly to this week’s Dilnot commission report to clarify future care funding. Ministers said they would defer their response until a White Paper next spring.

But Hay said: “We have heard the government’s timetable for consulting on the commission’s report, and the conditions any response need to meet. But we must also bear in mind that, while delay is understandable, uncertainty about the future will have inevitable and unfortunate consequences.”

Hay will address the NHS Confederation’s annual conference today and warn NHS leaders to prepare for adult social care to get worse before it gets better, and call for enhanced integration between the two sectors to be pursued with renewed vigour.

“Great social care and great health care are unambiguously interdependent: the one simply cannot occur without the other in the lives of so many of the citizens we jointly support,” said Hay. “The sooner both separate arms of this emerging consensus realise that, the better. We need to use the reality of the budgetary position to solve our problems together.”

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