Rising social care costs spell doom for services

摘要

Council spending on adult social care is squeezing cash out of other services, fresh analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has shown.As predicted in the Graph of Doom first created by Barnet LBC in 2012, adult social care spending is rising as a percentage of total service spend - from 34% in 2009/10 to 41% in 2017/18, eating into the cash for other services.According to the IFS, local authority spending on adult social care fell by 10% between 2009/10 and 2014/15. Acash injection thanks to the introduction of the Better Care Fund and council tax precept led to social care spending rising by 7% between 2014/15 and 2017/18 - but it still lags behind 2009/10 spending levels by 3%. This figure rises to 9% when you take population growth into account.Problems are exacerbated in more deprived areas, with the fifth most deprived councils cutting social care spending by 17% per person on average, compared with a 3% cut by their more affluent counterparts.Overall, spending per person on services other than adult social care has fallen by 32% since April 2009.