Delay to social care reforms will ‘fail more families every day’

Campaigners and thinktanks have said a failure to announce significant new social care reforms in the Queen’s speech will “fail more families every day” and put the health and wellbeing of thousands of vulnerable people at risk.

Reports suggest the government is to once more delay reforms to the adult social care system in England and Wales after being unable to agree on how to fund them, leaving many who rely on, provide or expect to need care services in the near future braced for disappointment after Tuesday’s Queens speech.

“I can’t quite believe the government has the audacity to delay social care reform again,” said Mike Padgham, chair of the Independent Care group. “How bad does it need to get before you do something? If it wasn’t so serious it would be laughable.”

Adult social care services in England have lost £8bn from social care budgets over the past decade. An estimated 1.5 million people are living without the care they need. Many of those receiving services have had cuts to the hours of help they receive every week, or find themselves forced to pay increased charges for services.

Boris Johnson said two years ago he would “fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared”. Yet it seems likely the Queen’s speech will offer only an intention to push ahead with social care reform at some point in the future.

Anna Severwright, a co-convener of the Social Care Future network, said cuts to personal budgets meant some care recipients who needed personal support ended up being forced to choose between “going shopping in Tesco or having a shower”.

One local social care charity head said: “We sense the walls are going up: people are being told by the council ‘we can’t help you’ and [being] sent away, even when legally they should be at least assessed for care.”

Most council social care bosses in England admit they cannot be sure they will be able to afford to meet all their statutory requirements to provide services over the next few months, in effect suggesting they could breach the law and opening themselves up to legal challenges.

Politicians have been vowing but failing to reform social care funding for two decades: there have been at least 17 reports and inquiries but no end product.

Padgham thought this time would be different. “I did feel optimism: I thought Johnson would be the Nye Bevan of social care. Call me naive but I believed him,” he said.

Sally Warren, director of policy at the King’s Fund, said: “No one is expecting the government to just click its fingers and say it is all fixed. There are no simple answers. But we need ministers to say what the next steps and stages of reforms are.” In the meantime, on the frontline things are deteriorating further. “More families are being failed every day,” she said.