If you follow me on here then you will know I often talk about the crisis in social care because I see its impacts on a daily basis.
In fact crisis seems too ‘soft’ a word now – as if those who make decisions around funding have stopped hearing it. They’ve almost become immune to the word and it washes over them.
Yet we are in a terrible position in the world of social care with not enough funding for every stakeholder within the system – and I include families in that equation.
The severity of this situation is only going to get worse if more money isn’t poured into the system and a long term plan put into place for social care systems and funding. As a society we are eventually going to have to accept that our aging population will cost us all more money.
These are people who have, in the majority, paid their way throughout their working lives and as they move into older years are more fearful than ever about what will happen if they need care – and how they will afford it.
The Office For National Statistics has now predicted that by 2047 there will be well over three million people in the UK aged 85 and older. Medical advances mean that people are living longer with chronic conditions – many of which require social care intervention of some kind.
Also those born in the 1960s, a generation where a larger number of children born, will start to move into their 80s. This represents around 4.3 per cent of the national population.
Today we’re struggling to cope as a sector and this age group makes up around 2.3 per cent of the population.
With this irrefutable fact before us, it’s crazy that our current government talks about plans to reform social care but says nothing will happen until 2028. For another three years at least, our sector will be stumbling along delivering care on a daily basis to those who need it and struggling to do so.
Families will continue to self-fund much care by selling assets like their loved ones’ homes – or by becoming unpaid carers for loved ones. It’s a sorry situation with no end in sight.
