Fit for purpose? New Care Act standards put to the test

No longer local: national criteria are to be set for Care and Support from next month. Photograph: Alzheimer’s Society

Government reforms to care and support – the assistance some adults receive in order to help them live as well as possible with long term or degenerative diseases – will not tackle basic funding shortfalls and may leave thousands of people needing to finance their own care, charities have warned.

At the moment, care and support is provided at the local level and includes help with washing, dressing, eating and maintaining a social life. Recipients are typically suffering from long-term illnesses which cause difficulties in daily life, or degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia.

Eligibility criteria for care and support, as well as the level of support available, currently differ from local authority to local authority. The Care Act, which will become law in April, is designed to provide a uniform level of support and eligibility across the country. Individuals will be able to assess their own needs and be given more control over the exact level of care they receive, while “deferred payment agreements” – under which assets such as a person’s home need only be sold to pay for care after the person has died – will be rolled out across England.

The Government claims that, thanks to the Act, “care and support in England is changing for the better”.

But Martyn Cooper, Operations Manager for north east London at the Alzheimer’s Society, says his organisation is seriously concerned that the reforms fail to tackle basic financial shortfalls in the sector.

‘Budgets have gone down while demand for care is increasing’

“The Care Act is still far from perfect and we remain concerned that not enough people will be eligible for care,” he said. “It doesn’t fix the serious funding gaps for
social care.”

Care and support is funded by local authorities and the Care Act contains no new allocation of resources.

“Local Authority budgets have consistently gone down while demand for care is increasing,” Cooper explains. “Until this is addressed, aspirations in the Care Act are not going to be met.”

Cooper is also concerned that the new, nationally standard eligibility criteria are being set at “a questionably high threshold”, with the risk of excluding people from support, meaning they will have to pay for care themselves. “People with dementia who have considerable needs may still not be eligible for care,” he said. “For many, this may represent a serious risk to their health and wellbeing and places a huge burden on the thousands of unpaid carers who will have to struggle on alone.”

Cooper does, however, broadly welcome the change in focus brought about by the Act. “It places a strong emphasis on information and advice, and puts the individual’s wellbeing at the heart of the care system,” he said.

“This should mean that people with dementia and their carers have better access to support when their needs are still relatively low level.”

Hackney CVS is the umbrella organisation for charities in Hackney and leads a number of health forums. Jackie Brett, Director of Communities and Partnerships at Hackney CVS says: “We are committed to supporting local charities to help meet their obligations under The Care Act and to working with the local authority to ensure that residents can access the best possible support available from the charity sector.”

The promise of identifying illness early on is always a sensible one: people with diseases suffer less and the public purse faces lower costs by treating less advanced conditions. But without enough money behind it, such a promise may prove hollow.

This article is published as part of a Community Partnership between the Hackney Citizen and Hackney CVS.