Dimensions responds to the Autumn Budget 2018

Almost a year on from the announcement of a green paper on adult social care, the Autumn Budget provided only a short term funding injection that will do little to solve increasing pressures on the sector. With an estimated £3.5 billion gap expected by 2025 a long term plan to fund services for people with disabilities is needed.

Around 120,000 people with learning disabilities use local authority services to live independent lives – services that people and their families feel are increasingly at risk of diminishing or disappearing.

Steve Scown, Dimensions CEO, commented “some funding is better than nothing whilst the sector is under such strain and few of us were expecting a solution in the Budget, but we all know that £650 million does not equate to a long term funding solution for adult social care.”

Scown continued “the green paper was due in the summer, then the autumn and as we near the end of 2018 we are concerned that the Budget’s £650 million has just seen real solutions to social care funding kicked further down the road once more.”