Last Updated on March 13, 2024
ARC England members are calling for a minimum 12% uplift in 2024/25 to cover the additional costs associated with the Autumn 2023 Budget. This is following the publication of ARC England's 2023/24 Fee Rate Maps. The learning disability and autism services membership association is also calling for Government to act quickly to stabilise the sector and for learning disability and autism services funding to be properly and robustly ring fenced thereafter.
Following the success of the 2022/23 Fee Rate Maps, the ARC England Learning Disability Research Unit’s Fee Rate Maps visualise the 2023/24 fee rates for external learning disability and autism services, provided in response to freedom of information requests sent to every local authority in England and Wales.
The message is clear: A minimum uplift of 12% is the amount required by providers to meet the National Living Wage increase that will be implemented from 2nd April 2024. ARC England is clear, however, that this does not begin to address the cumulative funding shortfall that year upon year of below-inflation fee rate uplifts has created.
According to ARC England, its members have communicated that for 2024/25, councils are offering providers fee rate uplifts in single figures. The organisation has even heard that some councils are suggesting to providers that they should use their reserves to continue to operate. Maintaining sensible operating reserves is necessary, not just to ensure compliance with the guidance published by the Charity Commission, but because to not do so would be a dereliction of the duties of trustees and board members, ARC England has outlined.
The data from the 2023/24 Fee Rate Maps is viewable for each council that responded by local authority area or by MP constituency. The maps show the average weekly and/or hourly rates being paid to providers plus the percentage fee rate uplift for the last six years for residential care, supported living, day services and domiciliary care.
The latest Fee Rate Maps show that day services fared worst for rate uplifts compared to other learning disability service types. If, according to the data, learning disability and autism services are among the lowest in the social care ‘hierarchy of visibility’, then day services are the least visible service type overall. This is despite the fact that, ARC England has highlighted, day services save local authorities huge amounts of money every year by, for example, enabling supported people to be looked after within their family home.
Click here to read ARC England's 2023/24 Fee Rate Maps, visualised by local authority.
Click here to read ARC England's 2023/24 Fee Rate Maps, visualised by MP constituency.
In other news, adult social care support continues to stagnate following a lack of action to reform the sector by successive governments.