Public spending on adult social care and delayed transfers of care in England

Purpose This paper aims to whether current public expenditure on adult social care services might be associated with the number of delayed days of care attributable to the social care system in England. Design/methodology/approach Panel econometric models on data from local authorities with adult social care responsibilities in England between 2013-2014 and 2018-2019. Findings After controlling for other organisational sources of inefficiency, the level of demand in the area and the income poverty amongst the resident older population, this paper finds that a 4.5% reduction in current spending per head on adult social care per older person in one year is associated with an increase by 0.01 delayed days per head the following year. Social implications Given the costs of adverse outcomes of delayed transfers of care reported in the literature, this paper suggests that budgetary constraints to adult social care services would represent a false economy of public funds. Originality/value This is the first paper that models the association between public spending on adult social care and delayed transfers of care due to issues originating in the social care system in England.