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Vulnerable older people needing care risk becoming casualties of the market unless the Government learns the lessons from the Northern Rock debacle, says Age Concern.

The charity is worried that measures in the Health and Social Care Bill to adopt a risk-based approach to regulating health and social care providers fail to provide adequate safeguards to improve the quality of care and to protect service users.

Age Concern is also apprehensive that measures in the Bill to create a new super-regulator (Care Quality Commission) to replace the three existing regulators are being taken forward at a time of swingeing budget cuts. Funding for the new body will be slashed by more than two thirds to less than 0.4% of overall spending on social care.

The charity warns that the way the regulatory regime is being developed risks undermining its work from the outset, repeating the mistakes in regulating the financial sector that led to the Northern Rock crisis.

The Bill is being considered by a committee of MPs this week. However, draft regulations to accompany it have not yet been published despite assurances from ministers that these would be ready in time for debates on the Bill. The regulations would define minimum standards for social care providers which a regulator would use to measure their performance. 

The new regulations will apply to all forms of health, social care and mental health providers. It is difficult to ‘humanise’ regulation for such a wide range of settings and there are widespread concerns that regulations will really be aimed at acute health services. For example, current regulations say a person is entitled to have their own things in their room in a care home. As this is not necessarily appropriate for a hospital setting, it is unlikely to be included in the new regulations.

Gordon Lishman, Director General of Age Concern said: “Following the Northern Rock crisis, the Government has had to rethink its approach to financial regulation. It urgently needs to do the same for health and social care. Ministers have done much to champion dignity in care, but cutting back regulation to the bare minimum is the wrong approach.”

ENDS

Notes to editors

The three existing health and social care regulators are the Healthcare Commission, the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) and the Mental Health Act Commission. The Health and Social Care Bill proposes to merge these three regulators to form a new Care Quality Commission.

A Department of Health assessment of savings in the cost of regulation shows that the funding for social care regulation is being cut from £14.4million to £7million per year. This is tiny when compared to total expenditure on social care, which current stands at £18 billion p.a. on social care.

Following evidence given to MPs by Sir Ian Kennedy, Chair of the current health regulator, the Healthcare Commission, a recent leader in the Financial Times called for the Health & Social Care Bill to be scrapped. Sir Ian warned that ‘significant challenges’ lie ahead for the new regulator and labelled it ‘a distraction’.

 

 

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