Continued Policy Drift on the Funding of Adult Social Care in England: What can be learned from the shelving of proposed charging reforms?

In 2021 the UK Government announced charging reforms relating to adult social care in England. The reforms would have ended a prolonged period of policy drift but were postponed in 2022 and cancelled in 2024. This paper reports on how different stakeholder groups perceived the reforms (and their delay), how they had been preparing for the implementation of the reforms, and identifies lessons for the future. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with care providers, those giving independent advice to the public, and those working in (and representing) local authorities. We identified no objection to the pillars underpinning charging reforms, although the implementation of the reforms would have been challenging, given the proposed timescale and workforce capacity in local authorities. Understanding of the reforms by the public and across some groups in the social care sector was generally poor. There was fear that elements of the planned reforms would simply have been unaffordable and that the implementation of fair cost of care in particular would be damaging for care providers. As one loser from prolonged policy drift and austerity, local authorities appear to have been backed into a position of being veto-players, due to their fears that funding from central government would be insufficient to implement and sustain the charging reforms, leaving them with crippling financial exposure. There has been no apparent benefit from preparatory work completed prior to the halting of the charging reforms. Deep-rooted cynicism and strained relations between stakeholder groups are likely to make implementation of any future reforms more challenging.