Local Government Services: Carers

(asked on 12th June 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how his Department plans to monitor the costs to local authorities of the Care Act 2014; and if he will make it his policy to provide additional funding to the councils which experience increased demand for their services.


Answered by
Alistair Burt Portrait
Alistair Burt
This question was answered on 22nd June 2015

Local authorities have been provided with £470 million in total for the cost of the new duties in the Care Act 2014 which came into effect in April 2015 and to support them in preparing for the reforms planned for April 2016. The process for assessing the costs was comprehensive and fully involved local government. The new burdens identified have been fully funded.

The National Audit Office (NAO) considered the Department’s approach to supporting delivery of the Care Act reforms, and concluded that this “has been implemented well, and shows good practice from which other programmes could learn.”

In relation to the process of assessing potential costs, the NAO’s report recognises the inherent difficulty of estimating demand, since this is dependent on individual behaviour. As a result, the NAO recognises that the Department’s estimate of the costs of the new rights for carers is based on an assumption that is “as reasonable” (paragraph 3.10) as that of NAO.

The Department has consistently acknowledged the difficulty of estimating these costs precisely, and undertook a cost modelling exercise with around 120 local authorities to review its assumptions. Following that work, the Department agreed with the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and the Local Government Association a process for the ongoing monitoring of specified demand data in all local authorities from 1 April 2015, based on the areas of most significant risk as identified by local authorities.

The new data collection covers the new burdens from the Care Act 2014 related to carers’ rights, the national minimum eligibility threshold, assessments for self-funders, deferred payment agreements, care and support in prisons, new rights to advocacy and safeguarding. It is being collected quarterly from 1 April 2015 as part of the regular Care Act implementation stocktakes of local authorities and will be reported to the Care and Support Reform Programme Board. It will help local government, in partnership with the Department, to understand whether the demand experienced is consistent with the assumptions made, and to consider cases where additional targeted support may be required.

The Department continues to work directly with local authorities and partners to support effective and efficient implementation, building on the additional £30 million investment support implementation provided in the 2014/15 year.

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