Green Party Manifesto: Social care

“There’s only a crisis in social care because of under-investment. Yes the ageing population is coming…”

• Councils were projected to spend £16.5 billion on adult social care in England in 2016/17—that’s a fall of 8% since 2009/10.
• Experts generally agree that councils need more money to pay for adult social care and keep up with the ageing population, but the exact figure they put on this varies.
• This ‘spending gap’ is estimated to be around £600 million in 2017/18 and £2.1 billion by 2019/20, according to experts at the Health Foundation think tank, along with the Nuffield Trust and King’s Fund.
• Other estimates made by charities and local government organisations put the size of the gap between £1.3 billion and £1.6 billion this year. By 2019/20 the estimates suggest it could be £1.1 billion to £2.6 billion. But these other estimates were made before the government committed around £2 billion to adult social care in England earlier this year.
• Between 2017 and 2027  the number of over 75s in England is expected to increase by just over 1.7 million, based on population projections.