Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have commissioned any independent evaluation of the effectiveness of the Better Care Fund in (1) improving the discharge of patients from acute hospitals and (2) reducing pressure on local authority adult social care budgets.

The Policy Research Unit on Quality and Outcomes of Person-Centred Care (QORU) was commissioned by the Department to carry out a system’s level evaluation of the Better Care Fund (BCF) covering its first year in 2015/16. A system-level evaluation of the Better Care Fund: Final Report was published in 2018, a copy of which is attached.

QORU found that areas which spent more BCF money per person had fewer delayed transfers of care than areas with low spending and concluded that the BCF reduced delays. The evaluation also found that local areas planned to spend a quarter of their BCF funding on maintaining social care services in 2015/16, underlining the contribution that the BCF makes to maintaining social care expenditure.

We continue to monitor and evaluate the BCF, to inform our approach to the Fund going forward. Last year, 93% of local areas agreed that joint working had improved as a result of the BCF.