Leader's column: Protecting adult social care

In her latest column, Tameside Council's Executive Leader, Cllr Brenda Warrington, believes adult social care workers face "the rug being pulled from underneath their feet" unless the government provide more funding to local authorities.

If you asked 100 people what the most important service local authorities provide for their residents, a decent amount of them would say “Adult social care”.

I haven’t met a person yet who wouldn’t rather be supported in their own home instead of in a care home, and having the adult social care services in place to do that is good for them and good for our NHS.

I wrote in a previous column that, due to reduced income and massive increases in demand for services during the coronavirus pandemic on the other, councils up and down the country now face a budget shortfall of over £10 billion.

Since then research has now been released by the Local Government Association showing what this funding gap means for our vital adult social care services.

Unless the government keeps the promise they made to us at the beginning of the pandemic to provide whatever money is needed to “get through this and come out the other side” we are looking at a 21 per cent cut in our budget this year alone.

There will be no easy savings to make and no cuts that will fall in places where they won’t be noticed. Back in 2010 we talked about hard decisions, but in 2020 we’ll be talking about impossible decisions that will have to be made.

Perhaps most damaging of all, the LGA estimates this would lead to £3.5 billion being taken out of adult social care, the equivalent of over 35,938 vulnerable people in the North West losing any services they would otherwise be entitled to.

Since the beginning it has been councils, together with our NHS and other key workers, who have been on the front lines of the struggle against this terrible pandemic. We know that elderly people are at far higher risk from coronavirus.

This has put enormous strain on our adult social care workers, but despite this they have continued to protect both our vulnerable residents and our NHS from being overwhelmed by the pandemic.

Along with many other local government Leaders across the country, I have written to the government demanding that they meet their funding obligations in full.

At a time where our hard-working adult social care workers need support more than ever, we are facing the very real risk of the rug being pulled out from underneath their feet. This cannot be allowed to happen.