Four options for tackling social care

By Ben Chu Policy and analysis correspondent, BBC Verify Published 43 minutes ago Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he would not want to leave office without bringing in "substantial change" to the social care system in England which provides support for older people and working-age adults with disabilities. The social care system - which is mostly provided by companies rather than directly by the state - is widely perceived as underfunded and unfair. It is estimated by Age UK there are two million older people in England now living with some unmet need for social care. At the moment funding for somebody getting care in their own home is means tested - so they may qualify for local council funding based on their income and savings. The value of their home is not taken into account. For residential care though the value of a person's home is generally part of the means test. People with assets above £23,250 are normally expected to pay the full cost of their care. There have been multiple attempts by governments to reform the system over the past 16 years - none of which have come to fruition because of arguments about how they will be paid for. BBC Verify has looked at four options for approaching reform and how much they could cost. 1. Cap on lifetime care costs Some people face extremely high costs for care at the end of their life. It has been estimated that around one in seven people aged 65 and over face lifetime care costs of more than £100,000. One proposal is to cap these costs with the government picking up the bill above a certain cash threshold. In 2011 a commission headed by the economist Andrew Dilnot proposed a lifetime cap of £35,000. Dilnot estimated his proposed reforms would cost between £1.3bn and £2.2bn a year. The cost today would be higher due to inflation and the ageing population. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, led by David Cameron, accepted Dilnot's recommendations. But after the 2015 general election, which delivered a Conservative majority, Cameron delayed the implementation of the cap to 2020 over what he said were pressures on the public finances. Image source, Getty Images In 2017, when Theresa May was in No 10, the Conservatives' general election manifesto proposed a different way to reform social care. This would have included the value of an individual's home in the means test used to decide what state funding they could get for care in their own homes. It did not, initially, include any cap on lifetime care costs, with the manifesto saying this was more "equitable" than the Dilnot plan. The May plan was branded a "dementia tax" by opponents and eventually dropped. 2. A more generous means test In England people can currently qualify for local authority financial support in a residential care home if all their assets - including their home - are worth less than £23,250. This is known as a means test - where the level of financial support a person gets is based on the value of thei