Analysis: Scots face paying extra £1bn in four years

Scotland, like many other western countries, is facing an increasingly ageing population and as a result, pressures to reshape our core public services to meet the needs of that population have become particularly acute.

We know what the demographic projections are, but it is sometimes overlooked that the growth in the number of older people will be accompanied by higher levels of dementia, restricted mobility and sensory impairments.

If left unchecked, the cost of meeting our future care needs alone will equal an extra 
£1 billion within four years, at the same time as the Scottish budget is being reduced. It may also prove difficult to increase the allocation for health and social care for older people, while public-sector finances are set to fall by at least 10 per cent in the short term.

Age Scotland believes, like the Scottish Government, that prevention is better, and cheaper, than cure.

At present budgets are so tied up in crisis expenditure that there is often not enough to tackle the underlying causes. Even where larger sums have been devoted to prevention, these have been inconsequential in relation to what is really needed.

We think the best way to tackle this problem is to refocus the current free personal care model by investing more into supporting older people to stay in their own homes, whenever possible, for as long as possible. Care homes cost around £600 per week, while the average weekly cost of a personal care package at home is less than a quarter of that. When you scale that up to a growing older population, we are looking at big savings to the public purse.

Furthermore, free personal care accounts for less than 8 per cent of the £4.5bn spent on the provision of health and social care to people aged 65 and over.

But this £350 million is only 31 per cent of the £1.5bn spent annually on unplanned emergency hospital admissions, the biggest single cost in the care of older people in Scotland.

Free personal care costs money and will continue to do so, and there is no denying that a sustainable model for the provision of long-term care is needed, along the lines of the recommendations of the Dilnot Commission in England.

• Lindsay Scott is communication and campaigns manager at Age Scotland.