Jewish Care says budget changes will ‘actively harm’ care sector

Jewish Care has warned that the latest government changes to the budget will “actively harm” the care sector and has appealed to the Jewish community for help in raising the necessary £20 million to sustain its current services by the end of the financial year.

The news, which follows the recent changes to the budget by Labour, will have a “huge financial impact” on the largest employer in the UK Jewish community, said the charity’s head.

Jewish Care CEO Daniel Carmel-Brown, who has worked in social care for 30 years, said he was accustomed to being “disappointed by successive governments’ failure” to reform social care. “However, these latest decisions actively harm the sector,” he said.

Jewish Care, the largest health and social care organisation for the Jewish community in London and the Southeast, warned: “Addressing NHS challenges without resolving the growing crisis in social care, while increasing costs for providers, is unsustainable and has serious repercussions.”

With a workforce of over 1,300 staff, Carmel-Brown said the 1.2 per cent rise in employers’ national insurance (NI) will increase Jewish Care’s wage bill by £400,000. Despite preparing for this increase, he claimed the additional lowering of the threshold to £5,000 would add another £700,000.

“Organisations like ours, with a high proportion of part-time frontline staff, are disproportionately impacted,” he said.

He continued: “Unlike commercial businesses, we cannot pass these costs onto residents funded by local authorities, which remain financially stretched. Budget allocations for social care will not reach frontline providers like us due to the fragility of local authority funding.”

He said the changes would cost Jewish Care an additional £1.1 million annually.

Carmel-Brown told the JC that he was “particularly alarmed” by the decision to exempt the NHS and public bodies from the NI increase while “expecting care providers and not-for-profit organisations to bear the cost”.

Carmel-Brown said Jewish Care, alongside other providers, were making their “concerns known to the government and anyone who will listen”, having already written to MPs and to the Treasury in order to send out a “strong message”.

Twenty million pounds must be raised by the community or, the CEO warned, “difficult decisions” would have to be made.

“We are confident that, with their continued support, we will rise to the challenges ahead,” Carmel-Brown said.

AN HM Treasury spokesperson said at the time of the budget announcement: “Our tax regime for charities, including exemption from paying business rates, is among the most generous of anywhere in the world, with tax reliefs for charities and their donors worth just over £6 billion for the tax year to April 2024. Increasing employer National Insurance will raise over £25 billion to help fund the NHS and protect working people’s payslips from higher taxes.”