Recommendation 23

HM Government · verbatim extract Not Addressed

101. The government is considering this recommendation. 102. The government welcomes the committee’s recommendation and agrees that the social care sector is essential, in its role of identifying needs and supporting and referring children and young people, to the provision of mental health services. The government has taken several steps to increase funding in the social care system. 103. On 7 September 2021, we committed to investing an additional £5.4 billion over 3 years in adult social care to begin a comprehensive programme of reform, and on 1 December 2021 we published our white paper People at the heart of care , in which we set out our 10-year vision for reforming adult social care and outlined our priorities for investment. The measures announced in the white paper will bring tangible benefits to the lives of people who draw on care, including those who draw on mental health services, their families and carers. 104. In addition to the £5.4 billion for adult social care, the government is providing councils with £4.8 billion of new grant funding over the Spending Review period for adult and children’s social care and other services. This represents the largest annual increases in local government core funding in over a decade. This new grant funding includes an additional £200 million for the cross-government Supporting Families programme, around a 40% real-terms uplift in funding for the programme by FY 2024 to 2025, taking total planned investment across the next 3 years to nearly £700 million. This funding will help up to 300,000 more families that face multiple, interconnected issues, access effective whole-family support and improve their life outcomes. 105. Further, the adoption support fund, set up in 2015 and highly valued by families, provides funding for adopted and eligible special guardianship order children and families to receive therapeutic services. These children have often been traumatised as a result of abuse or neglect. Funding in FY 2021 to 2022 was £46 million. 106. The Autumn Budget set out the provisional local government finance settlement which provides an additional £3.5 billion to councils, an increase in local authority funding for FY 2022 to 2023 of over 4% in real terms. This will ensure councils across the country have the resources they need to deliver key services. Local authorities can make use of over £1 billion of additional resource specifically for social care in FY 2022 to 2023. This includes the increase in Social Care Grant and the improved Better Care Fund, a 1% adult social care precept and deferred flexibilities from last year’s settlement.