Requests For Social Care At Record High Report Reveals

More people are receiving adult social care in England following years of decline, official data has revealed.

Councils funded long-term care packages for 858,720 people during 2023-24, up 2.8% on the year before, which in turn followed a 2.1% rise in 2022-23, according to NHS England’s annual adult social care activity and finance report.

In the interim, the numbers receiving council-funded long-term care in 2023-24 were at levels last seen in 2017-18, while authorities also boosted number of reablement packages last year, following a rise in funding.

Key elements of the report reveal:

• Gross current expenditure on adult social care by local authorities was £27.1 billion. This represents an increase of £3.4 billion (14.2%) from the previous year.
• Over three quarters (79.1% or £21.4 billion) of total gross current expenditure was spent on long term support, this has increased by £3.0 billion (16.2%) compared to 2022-23.
• In 2023-24, 858,720 clients received long term care during the year. This has increased by 23,385 clients (2.8%) since 2022-23. Overall, the number of clients receiving long term care has decreased since 2015-16. This downward trend has been mainly driven by a decrease in clients aged 65 and over receiving long term care, down 28,275 to 559,220 since 2015-16.
• For the second time, over 2.0 million (2,085,720) requests for adult social care support, were received by local authorities. This is equivalent to 5,715 requests for local authority support received per day in England by local authorities (up 230 requests per day on last year).

Local authorities reported reasons for the fluctuation since last year included services continue to be affected post-pandemic, increased complexity of clients, change in recording processes and case management systems, and increased demand for services.

“These alarming figures show state funded support for carers in England has nosedived in recent years,” said charity the Carers Trust’s director of policy and public affairs, Dominic Carter.

“This is a travesty at a time when carers are taking on ever more responsibility and facing burnout as they prop up a health and social care system that’s been starved of funding.”