Recommendation 12

With regard to additional funding for hospital discharge—£600 million in 2023– 24 and £1 billion in 2024–25—the Department told us that delayed discharges had been consistently lower over the last 6 months than the previous year despite an increase in emergency admissions. The Department said that the best measure of whether money had been well spent was “supported discharges” – the number of people being discharged with a package of social care or community care. We heard that supported discharges were 17% higher at the end of December 2023 than December 2022.25 In written evidence, Mencap cautioned that one-off discharge funds like this do not tackle the systemic funding issues facing social care.26