Visualising the cost of care

The debate around how to fund social care is in the headlines again this week. This chart (from a 2014 NAO report here) is the best I have ever seen on the topic. It shows that then the cost of informal care in England was much more than the state spends on care and that, on a replacement basis, informal care was equivalent to the total that the government spent on the NHS.

It would be interesting to get an update for 2021. In November 2020 CarersUK estimated on a full year replacement cost basis informal care would now be £193 billion per year as a result of the pandemic. That’s not far off the spending for 2020/21 for DHSC of £212.1 billion, with £63.4 billion of COVID-19 spending (and which includes more than just the NHS.)