Image source: David Woolfall, CC BY 3.0
The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) has said it will make £100 million available to accelerate the digitisation of social care in England as part of its spending plans for the sector.
It said this will include investment in digital social care records, and be accompanied by the creation of an innovation and improvement unit to explore new solutions in care backed up by an additional £35 million.
But the planned investment for digitisation is significantly below the £150 million pledged in the white paper on reform of social care published in December 2021.
This reflects a broader reduction in the money made available to support the reform, which has been described by the Local Government Association (LGA) as a “significant watering down of promises”.
The LGA said the DHSC’s new commitment of £700 million is substantially below a previous promise of £1.7 billion and stated: “Given the well documented capacity issues and levels of unmet and under met need, it is hard to see how reducing the funding available to begin to address some of the issues can be justified.
“We are calling for the £600 million that is yet to be allocated to be clearly ringfenced for social care and given to councils, without additional conditions, to help address immediate care needs in communities.”
Data improvements
Other features of the new pledge include £50 million to improve data and quality assurance in the sector, including person-level data collections new Care Quality Commission assessments of local authorities.
Health Minister Helen Whately MP said: “Care depends completely on the people who do the caring – that’s over a million care staff working in care homes and agencies, and countless relatives, friends and volunteers, acting out of the kindness of their hearts.
“That’s why this package of reforms focuses on recognising care with the status it deserves, while also focusing on the better use of technology, the power of data and digital care records, and extra funding for councils – aiming to make a care system we can be proud of.”
