Adult social care services in the UK are in crisis. That applies to Surrey County Council as much as anywhere else. The number of people needing care has increased. People are living longer but not always in good health. Children born with disabilities now live into adulthood and people who become disabled survive for longer. The increase in life expectancy is a good thing but it means there are more people who need support. For many years governments from all parties have promised to change the system of paying for the service and all of them have failed to do it. In fact, instead of helping to solve the problem, they have made it worse by not giving local councils enough money to do the job.
This is a problem that is not going to go away. A solution has to be found. At the moment, Surrey County Council is trying to resolve its own adult social care situation by reducing the number and level of care packages it gives out despite the fact that the need is rising. Among other things, that means that they will limit payments to residential care homes and companies who provide care workers to people living at home which has a knock-on effect on those companies and the people who work for them. One piece of information that is not widely known is that people who pay fr their own care actually pay more because they are subsidising the council-funded packages.The council used to run its own care homes across the county but they closed them down instead of investing the money to modernise them. They said they couldn’t afford it but they can still find £100m for their Your Fund scheme just months ahead of a county council election.
As a further kick in the teeth to the service, workers in the public sector are to have a pay freeze despite all the extra effort they put in during the Corona virus crisis. These are the same public sector jobs who had their pay frozen time after time during the austerity years.They are the same people, alongside NHS staff, that we all stood and clapped to show how much we valued the work they were doing. Isn’t that the ultimate irony!