ADASS Spring Survey 2024

Last updated: 19 August 2024

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Foreword and Introduction

This report has been published just weeks after the 2024 General Election that saw a change of Government. We hope that it will be essential reading for the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and Minister for Social Care.

At ADASS, we already have solutions to many of the issues outlined in this Survey, in our independently commissioned report Time to act: A roadmap for reforming care and support in England.

The message from this year’s Spring Survey is clear, more of the same is not an option. We need a change of approach, or the challenges set out in this report will continue to intensify to the detriment of people’s lives. The one-year funding settlements from Government that have been the norm for several years have failed to create the conditions for adult social care to thrive. In fact, quite the opposite. Directors are in a place where, collectively, they overspent more on adult social care budgets than in recent history; where complexity of need is increasing and where over 400,000 people are waiting for an assessment, care to begin or an assessment of their needs.

The impact of long waiting lists for NHS treatment, GP appointments and adult social care also means that in many cases, people are requiring more complex support in the longer run as they wait longer with unmet needs whilst their health, wellbeing and independence deteriorates.

What’s the answer? We need to invest in people, whether that be improved terms and conditions for care staff, more support for unpaid carers, or in care and support that is focused on early support that enables people to live as independently as possible, for as long as possible. Government must seize this opportunity to engage with people who work in social care and who access care and support to proactively shape policy and spending decisions. Co-production must be at the heart of this Government’s approach to adult social care.

We need Government to provide greater stability and certainty for councils, care providers, the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFSE) sector and people who draw on care and support through multi-year funding settlements. This will enable adult social care to innovate and evolve away from traditional models of care to those which seek to enable people to live as independently for as long as possible in their community.

We need Government to view adult social care and the NHS as interdependent, rather than separate entities. Pressures from one feed into the other. With intense budgetary pressures on the NHS, this survey shows that fewer people with complex needs can access Continuing Healthcare (CHC) or Joint Funding, where the NHS pays for all or some of a person’s care needs. This is resulting either in council-funded adult social care supporting more people than previously, or in people having to pay for their own care and/or unpaid carers providing more support than would previously have been the case. We can’t go on just simply passing responsibility and funding pressures from one part of the system to another.

It’s imperative that our new Government prioritises adult social care. Time to Act provides a clear blueprint for change. While we don’t expect immediate solutions, we urge the Government to demonstrate the political will to invest in social care and recognise the importance of adult social care to all of our lives.

We extend our gratitude to ADASS members and their staff for taking the time to collate answers and complete the survey. We’d like to thank policy and communication colleagues in the ADASS national team for working to analyse the results and pull this report together, with support from our partners at Cordis Bright. We also appreciate the invaluable input and advice from ADASS Trustees, our Resources Co-Leads, and the National Care & Health Improvement Adviser for Finance in Partners in Care and Health, whose collective experiences inform the messages shared here, both locally and nationally.

Melanie Williams – ADASS President

Anna Hemmings – ADASS Chief Executive