Social care chiefs fear system faces collapse, survey shows Social care system faces collapse if scale of cuts continues just as demand for services rise, survey shows. Photograph: Anna Gordon More older people and citizens with disabilities will be denied state-funded care support over the next two years as local authority finances continue to take a battering from funding cuts, social care chiefs have warned. The scale and severity of the financial squeeze is laid bare in a survey which shows that by April councils in England will have stripped out £2.7bn from adult social care services since 2010 - equivalent to 20% of their care budgets - even as demand for services continues to rise. Many recipients of basic state-funded care such as help with washing and eating, or meals on wheels, could face a reduced service, while others will lose out on care support altogether. Sandie Keene, president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass), which carried out the survey, said that although councils had made substantial savings through making services more efficient it was increasingly difficult to shield vulnerable people from the cuts. She said: "Some of the people we have responsibilities for may be affected by serious reductions in service - with more in the pipeline over the next two years." Councils plan to make £800m in adult social care savings over the next 12 months alone. Around £104m of this would be made though the "direct withdrawal of services." Keene said continued reductions on this scale were unsustainable, despite the transfer to local authority budgets of around £850m of NHS funds this year and the prospect of further such transfers in future. Councils say they are facing year-on-year rises in "demography pressures" of 3% - the demands on care services caused by an ageing population and severely disabled people living longer. The Adass survey comes as the government prepares to publish its Care and Support bill, which aims to clarify people's rights to social care. This may herald closer working between social care and NHS services but is unlikely to solve the wider care funding problems faced by councils. The bill, which will be announced in the Queen's speech today (Wed), also sets out the government's proposals to cap care fees at £75,000. The survey of adult social care directors in 150 English local authorities, which received a near 100% response rate, suggests that the current system is under severe strain. A third of directors believed people who would qualify for care support were already unable to access it as a result of spending cuts and tightenming eligibility criteria. Asked whether they agreed that in two years time more people will be denied care, that figure rose to 50%. As well as cuts, future savings were likely to come from reducing service users' personal care budgets, and switching care services to cheaper providers, the survey found. Relatively few directors saw increasing charges for to service users as a major source of savings this year. Cllr Zoe Patrick, Chair of the Local Government Association Community Wellbeing Board, said: "The stark reality is that if such vast sums of money continue to be taken out of the care system it could be in very real danger of collapse." The Department of Health said the government had prioritised social care. Many authorities were "innovating and achieving much greater integration between health and care services, thereby improving care for people and optimising use of resources available." Richard Hawkes, Chair of the Care and Support Alliance of 70 disability and social care charities said: "These latest findings from Adass paint a damming picture of the true scale of the social care crisis that is engulfing councils. Councils have been placed in the impossible position of having to provide support to growing numbers of people who need care, at a time when they are facing unprecedented cuts to their budgets. The impact of shrinking social care budgets is also being felt by private care homes and other care providers such as domiciliary home care firms, as more councils refuse to raise fees. Nearly half of directors reported that providers were "facing financial difficulty."