Royal London head of longevity Sacha Dhamani has warned the current stagnation around long-term care funding cannot continue as the pandemic has worsened an already “bad situation”.
With the average time a person lives in care estimated at 2.5 years, Dhamani highlighted that since prime minister Boris Johnson announced a plan to resolve the care issue in 2019, another cohort will have almost completely passed through care homes, with no concrete action being taken.
Writing in the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries Longevity Bulletin, Dhamani emphasised the continuing uncertainty regarding a long-term settlement for care provision in the UK “causes challenges for all stakeholders.”
“Providers cannot make sound strategic decisions regarding their business when the funding situation may change, making investment particularly risky,” he said.
“Local authorities, whose funding is insufficient to cover increasing care costs alongside their other public responsibilities.
“Insurers cannot provide insurance products that directly meet customer needs when those needs are unclear.”
Most vulnerable left behind
And he added that those most directly affected and vulnerable, those in need of care, were also left uncertain and isolated from planning and support.
“Current 65-year-olds should therefore be planning for their future care, but without accurate information to inform their specific likelihood of needing care it is almost impossible for them to predict such long-term needs realistically,” he continued.
“Improved data and interpretation of this data are needed and one of the few positive elements of the government’s recent white paper was the recognition of the need to improve data availability to understand capacity and risk in the social care system.”
Self-fulfilling prophecy of unpleasant care
Citing his personal experiences, Dhamani also noted that too few care homes were capable of offering a quality of life that anyone would aspire to despite the best efforts of staff and providers.
He warned that the UK risked making the current care situation a self-fulfilling prophecy where people expected care to be unpleasant and so if there was no willpower or aspiration to improve it, it would remain in that state.
He concluded: “Covid-19 has increased public awareness of the issues facing the delivery of care for the oldest and most vulnerable in our society – if this awareness can be coupled with a raising of expectations of what life in care should be like then the political will to resolve the care issue may follow. We need to care more about long-term care.”