care providers<\/a> has continued to spiral downwards. According to Access Social Care, pressure on capacity has meant that helplines have been required to take on additional staff and expand opening hours to cope with the increased demand on their services.<\/p>\nCharging has also become an increasingly pressing issue, accounting for 25 per cent of the dataset. Local authorities have been pushed into further unsustainable cost efficiencies, increasing charges for social care to meet budget targets and causing further demand for advice on charging.<\/p>\n
Kari Gerstheimer, Chief Executive of Access Social Care said:\u00a0\u201cWhether we are self-funders or in receipt of state funded care, we will all need social care at some point either for ourselves or for a loved one.<\/p>\n
“The Government claims to have fixed social care and continues its promises to help ease the cost-of-living crisis, but the sums don\u2019t add up. Millions of people are feeling the effects of an underfunded system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want a social care system that is properly financed, readily available and fairly distributed. Currently, vital services are overstretched, and people are going without the necessary social care they so desperately need – something needs to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caroline Abrahams CBE, Charity Director of Age UK said:\u00a0“The findings in this report provide clear evidence of a system under severe duress.<\/p>\n
“Councils are struggling to discharge their responsibilities to people in need of care and support and are having to adopt explicit prioritisation measures to deal with the overwhelming demands they face.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn these difficult circumstances navigating the always complex social care system is a real challenge. It makes the role of charities who provide information and advice about social care more important than ever, both for the people in need of help and by shining a light on what’s really going on in care services across the country.”<\/p>\n
Access Social Care<\/a> provides expert legal advice to disabled people, elderly people, and their family carers to ensure their social care needs are met.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of social care needs assessment enquiries increased by 229 per cent in the year 2021\/2022 compared to 2019\/2020, according to Access Social Care\u2019s annual State of the Nation report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":3160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25,28],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3155"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3159,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155\/revisions\/3159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}