The paper says that under the current system, support is means tested, meaning that only those with capital assets under £23,250 are eligible for the taxpayer-funded service, however, the threshold has been frozen since 2010, meaning that it has lagged significantly behind inflation:
Andy Burnham has made social care reform one of his major priorities but previous prime ministers have struggled to fulfil promises to make the system fairer due to difficulty securing cross-party consensus about how it should be funded.
One immediate measure to alleviate the pressure on poorer families was suggested by the King’s Fund.
The think tank calculated that if ministers had uprated the threshold in line with rising prices, then the figure would stand at £35,600 for the current financial year.
The move has effectively cost some users £12,350 in the current financial year alone, by forcing them to self-fund their own care down to the 2010 level, according to the think tank.
Official statistics show that there have been 17,880 self-funders who received social care support from their local authorities, after spending down to the £23,250 threshold, over the past five years.
Figures have only been collected since 2021, so the true number affected since the freeze in 2010-11 is likely to be significantly higher.
Simon Bottery, senior fellow for social care at the King’s Fund, told The Times that the 15-year freeze to thresholds was “just one symptom of an unfair social care system resulting from reform being put off for decades”.
He said: “Governments have talked about change and even legislated for it but have not had the courage to implement it. We welcome the new prime minister’s aim to buck this decades-long trend. His words and actions have shown a renewed drive from the centre to force reform through, something that had been sorely lacking, and has put this issue near the top of the political agenda.
“Wholesale reform is now needed. Currently, the system leads to a loss of dignity and independence for those in need of care. It also creates stress and anxiety for loved ones supporting people in need and worries about catastrophic care costs, whilst piling pressure on an already creaking NHS.”
The capital limit has been frozen for 15 years, but minimum-income thresholds have risen since 2022-23.
There are about 220,000 people in England who pay for adult social care without any state support.
Costs are capable of running into hundreds of thousands of pounds but self-funders have also been hit by higher costs for private providers — used to offset the smaller margins from lower rates paid by councils for state support.
This means that self-funders not only keep less of their savings but also see them disappear more quickly because they are charged significantly more than people receiving state support, according to the King’s Fund.
This failure to uprate the threshold is just one aspect of a failing social care system that is in urgent need of reform. Further delay is just going to exacerbate the situation. Burnham needs to live up to his promises and sort this out as soon as possible.
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