Older people will lose independence if council services are squeezed by rising social care costs

I'm back in action after a period of doing personal things, of which more later.

And in the meantime, this Report has come out, which is really important for the future of services for older people. The Local Government Association has published a modelling of local government funding trends, from 2012-20. Look at these two diagrams. Chart 5 shows you how the cost of social care increases up to 2020, and squeezes all other local government expenditure. Chart 7 shows you how many people actually use local government social care services – a very small proportion of the population, compared with people who use the services that are going to be squeezed. Will political support for social care disappear, when everyone’s services begin to vanish?

What will be the consequences for attitudes to older people if all the mainstream services of local councils are drastically squeezed to sustain social care.

And what will be the consequences for most old people, who do not use social care? All the services that keep them independent, leisure, transport and libraries will be squeezed, which means bigger expenditure for social care, because older people will lose their independence sooner.

Citation: Local Government Association(2012) Funding outlook for councils from 2010/11 to 2019/20: Preliminary modelling. London: LGA.

See the report on the web:

http://www.local.gov.uk/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=01a7770d-ed32-4bac-ae43-8fb4090e5d65&groupId=10171