About 70 per cent, of care home residents aged 65 and over have all or part of their care publicly funded. However, as a universal entitlement, free care-home care is neither affordable nor desirable in the context of finite resources. None of the billions of pounds needed to make care in a care-home free would increase the choice or quality of care homes or support improvements to social care provision.
Our policy is to focus finite social care resources on measures to increase service users’ independence and choice, through things such as direct payments and enabling people to be cared for in their own homes where the overwhelming majority of people want to be.