Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate she has made of the number of people in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England who have unmet care needs; and what steps her Department is taking to ensure those care needs are met.

Local authorities are responsible for assessing individuals’ care and support needs and, where eligible, for meeting those needs. Where individuals do not meet the eligibility threshold, they can get support from their local authorities in making their own arrangements for care services, as set out in the Care Act 2014.

We recognise that some people still experience challenges in accessing the care and support they need, when they need it. That is why ensuring that people find adult social care fair and accessible is one of the three main objectives of our 10-year reform vision for adult social care. To achieve this vision, we are supporting local authorities to address workforce pressures, drive improvements in their local area, and better streamline their assessment processes.

To support this, the Government has made available up to £8.6 billion in additional funding over the financial years 2023/24 and 2024/25, to support adult social care and discharge. This includes up to £1.5 billion of additional grant funding for adult social care for 2024/25, compared to 2023/24, alongside a 2% increase to the adult social care precept for local authorities with social care responsibilities, uptake of which will generate a further £609 million in 2024/25. In addition, the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund, worth almost £2 billion over two years, is designed to support increased adult social care capacity, improve market sustainability, and enable local authorities to make improvements to adult social care services.