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

Jose Iparraguirre (Department of Economic and Business Sciences, Universidad de Moron, Moron, Argentina and Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain)

Quality in Ageing and Older Adults

ISSN: 1471-7794

Article publication date: 27 August 2020

Issue publication date: 1 December 2020

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Abstract

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.

Keywords

Citation

Iparraguirre, J. (2020), "Public spending on adult social care and delayed transfers of care in England", Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, Vol. 21 No. 3, pp. 155-167. https://doi.org/10.1108/QAOA-11-2019-0066

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited

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