We sign Providers open letter to Chancellor

Community Integrated Care is amongst 35 care providers from across the specialist care sector – spanning learning disability, autism, mental health, and complex care support – who have come together to sign an open letter to Chancellor Rachel Reeves, calling for urgent action following the Autumn budget announcement on 30th October 2024.

Signed by our charity’s CEO, Jim Kane, the letter outlines the impact that the new budget will have on specialist care providers and urges the Chancellor to ‘mitigate the financial impact on specialist care of the increase in employer National Insurance Contributions and National Living Wage changes announced in [the Autumn] Budget.’

Within the letter, it states: 

“We welcome the Government’s comments on achieving parity between social care and the NHS, embrace the ambition of the new Mental Health Bill, and wholeheartedly support the Government’s ‘Fair Pay Agreement for Care Workers’. We all want to pay carers more for the vitally important, skilled work they do, and need our sector to become a truly valued and desired career.”

“But the sector is not receiving the funding needed to achieve these ambitions. Twenty years of reports have highlighted the chronic and growing underfunding of social care. This includes the Government’s own impact assessment on the Employment Rights Bill, which found care providers have ‘limited scope’ to absorb pay increases, that councils ‘constrain fees’, and that the cost of the policy would fall back on central Government.”

“While we acknowledge the Chancellor’s comments on the broader financial context surrounding the Budget, providing just £600m to adult and children’s social care – at a time when local councils are predicting £564m of overspend on adult care alone this year – will not help the Government achieve its aspirations for the social care workforce or strengthen public services.”

“Moreover, whilst we prudently planned for an increase in the National Living Wage, the scale of the change in Employer National Insurance contributions – a predicted £2.4bn cost to the adult care sector per year – is of a magnitude we could neither predict, nor can we shoulder.”

“Politicians from all parties must honour their promises and immediately work collaboratively for sustainable change in social care. In the meantime, a commitment to mitigate the Budget’s damaging impact on social care services must be made before providers are forced to take damaging decisions that cannot be reversed.”

“Investing in social care now will enable the people we support to lead the bright and ambitious futures they deserve, whilst unleashing the NHS to thrive.”

Find out more and read the full letter.