Planning for the Better Care Fund
Closed
What the inquiry looked at
“In April 2014 the 151 Health and Wellbeing Boards submitted plans setting out how they would spend the Better Care Fund from April 2015 to drive integration of health and social care services, improve the quality of healthcare and social care, and save money. However, the quality of early preparation and planning has not matched the scale of ambition. The Better Care Fund aims to deliver better, more joined-up local services to older and disabled people to care for them in the community, keep them out of hospital and avoid long hospital stays. However, early local plans for the Fund, which will pool £5.3 billion of existing NHS and local authority funding in 2015-16, did not meet Ministers’ expectations or generate the level of savings the Government expected and all plans had to be resubmitted. Although the Government’s early planning assumption was that the Fund would save the NHS £1 billion in 2015-16, current plans forecast at least £314 million of savings for the NHS. The Better Care Fund will run from April 2015. The Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local Government have developed the Fund’s policy, with NHS England and the Local Government Association responsible for the delivery and implementation of the Fund. This inquiry will allow the Committee to assess and comment at the planning stage on the risks to successful integration of services, value for money and the impact on patients. It will also explore how accountability for the local use of the Fund will operate.”
The committee's words, from the inquiry page on parliament.uk ↗.
What it found
The £5.3 billion Better Care Fund (the Fund) was introduced as an opportunity to transform local health and social care services by pooling resources to stimulate closer joint working and innovation for the benefit of local populations and the taxpayer. The initial planning for the Fund was deeply flawed. The Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local Government (the Departments), and NHS England changed the rules in the middle of the planning phase, after failing to tell planners they needed to identify £1 billion in savings. As a result, all 151 health and wellbeing boards had to submit revised plans resulting in wasted time, effort and money. Local areas are now at greater risk of not being able to implement the policy. The scale of the challenge facing local government and the NHS is growing as demand for health and care services increases. We are concerned that the new focus on reducing emergency admissions and making savings will significantly increase pressure in adult social care services.
What the government said
No government response is linked to this report.
How the inquiry ran
Each dot is a dated item listed on this page, from the inquiry's opening on 11 November 2014 to its close on 26 March 2015.
- Oral evidence 1 Dec 2014
- Report 26 Feb 2015
What it recommended
The committee's recommendations are not listed here yet. Read them in 37th Report - Planning for the Better Care Fund ↗ on parliament.uk.
Evidence
Oral evidence sessions 1
- 1 Dec 2014No witnesses recordedparliament.uk ↗