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The chancellor, Alistair Darling, has said the social care budget will rise to £1.4bn by 2010. Resources for local authorities, which provide adult social services, will be £2.6bn more in 2010-11 than in 2007-08, representing a 1% rise over inflation.
This is alongside an extra £2bn being spent on health and education. The education budget is set to rise from £77.7bn in 2007-08 to 92bn by 2010-11 and there will be a rise in NHS spending of 4% over inflation - 1% more than predicted - taking the health budget from £90bn in 2007-08 to £110bn by 2010-11.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that if social security spending were to grow by just 2% a year, it will mean very little additional money can be found for meeting other targets, such as the government's targets on reducing child poverty. The fact that the actual growth is 1% will put such targets even more at risk.
Some thought that increases of this level would see adult social care squeezed, but the chancellor has found extra money. What does this comprise? The main pledge is an increase in direct funding for social care of £190m, to £1.5bn by 2010-11, including more money for carers and greater personalisation of services, as promised by the prime minister Gordon Brown in his speech to the Labour Party conference.
There will be more use of individual budgets, which are being piloted by several local authorities, and spending on preventative projects for older people and on advocacy and information services, which are seen as a vital aspect of encouraging and supporting people to put together individual budgets. The expansion of individual budgets will depend on the evaluation, due out next year, of existing pilots.
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