Caring choices: the future of social care funding

What did we do in this project?

In 2005, The King's Fund commissioned Sir Derek Wanless to conduct a review of social care funding. The outcome was a report, Securing Good Care for Older People, which looked at the challenges facing social care over the next 20 years, the resources that will be needed to meet them, and the options for finding those resources.

The King's Fund followed this up with Caring Choices in 2007, a coalition of 15 organisations drawn from across the long-term care sector, that sought to engage the public in debate about what care should be provided and how it should be funded in the future.

Caring Choices published a report in 2008, The Future of Care Funding, saying there was 'almost no support' for the present system of means-tested funding and significant levels of support for some kind of 'partnership' model of funding in which the government and individuals shared the costs of care.

Why are we interested in this project?

Caring Choices sought to keep the issue of long-term social care funding in the public eye and to press the government to make changes. It held seven all-day events in England and Scotland at which older people, carers and others with experience of the care system could debate the issues.

Project team

Caring Choices was led by The King's Fund, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Help the Aged and Age Concern.

These organisations worked in partnership with:

• the Alzheimer's Society
• the Association of British Insurers
• the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services
• Carers UK
• Counsel and Care
• English Community Care Association
• Independent Age
• Local Government Association
• the Royal College of Nursing
• the NHS Confederation
• the Social Care Institute for Excellence.

It also worked with:

• Age Concern Scotland
• the Elders Council of Newcastle
• Help the Aged Scotland
• Leeds Older People’s Forum
• the Race Equality Foundation.