Introduction

Funding issues have long been a major concern in social care. While funding support for the National Health Service was massively increased under New Labour administrations from 1997 onwards, the same was not true for its partner policy, social care, where spending has not significantly increased. The legacy of Conservative administrations from the late 1970s onwards, was of a chronically underfunded social care sector. This has been perpetuated rather than rectified by subsequent governments. The 2006 Wanless Report on social care offered more formal confirmation of this view (Wanless, 2006). Wanless made clear that existing funding arrangements were untenable, particularly for the future, highlighting predicted demographic changes leading to large increases in both the proportions and numbers of older and very old people needing support.

Because of the wide and growing sense that existing funding arrangements for social care were unworkable, in 2009, the Labour government published a Green Paper on future social care funding (HM Government, 2009). It put forward three funding options for public consultation. These were what it called the partnership, insurance and comprehensive options.