Published: 21/02/2002, Volume II2, No. 5792 Page 21
The deadlines for departments to make submissions to the Treasury's comprehensive spending review passed this week. We hope health secretary Alan Milburn put in an ambitious bid to increase social services budgets.
NHS funding has begun a transformation since the turn of the century (though admittedly, staff on the front line may not all have felt the benefit equally). Social services spending, however, is still stuck in the parsimonious, deleterious 1990s. As the Local Government Association and Association of Directors of Social Services are currently warning, social care services will be in 'serious jeopardy unless substantial, immediate and long-term financial investment is made'. Their figures reveal a projected£218m overspend.
It does not take a policy wonk of singular perception to see the folly of this. Progress towards restoring the NHS to public confidence is being hampered by social services' failure to keep up. The LGA and ADSS estimate that the extra£200m allocated to tackle bed-blocking next year will create a£159m knock-on requirement which is as yet unfunded. This disparity of approach to funding health and social care is like filling the car with petrol but neglecting ever to top up the oil.
Now the warning light is shining bright on the dashboard. Social services chief inspector Denise Platt told the Commons health select committee in no uncertain terms that bedblocking will worsen if the gap between NHS and social services investment continues to grow. LGA chair Sir Jeremy Beecham has called for 'convergence of investment'.
Six per cent of acute beds are now blocked by delayed discharges, while 40 per cent of patients whose discharges have been delayed have been in hospital for more than a month. Conservative backbencher Andrew Murrison has presented a bill which would introduce a statutory maximum wait. Obviously ministers are not about to countenance that. But though it may be little more than a gesture today, it is not inconceivable that the government could be forced to adopt such a measure at some point in the future, just as it made co-operation between the NHS and local authorities a matter of statute.
Eradicating bed-blocking will depend not only on fatter social services budgets but on joint-working of a more complex, sophisticated and consistent nature than has been attempted hitherto. Chancellor Gordon Brown, steeled by his personal experience of the NHS, has pledged allegiance to the health cause. Equally important, he now has an opportunity to kick-start the financial rescue of social services too. l
No comments yet