Everyone seems to agree that integrating Health and Social Care is not only a “no-brainer” in terms of providing the best possible service to those in need, but the only way we as a society can ensure that the limited funds available stretch to meet the challenges presented by an aging population.

Creating a £3.8bn Better Care Fund to kick start the process during 2015/16 therefore seemed a great idea when it was first announced in the June 2013 Spending Round.

The problem was that this was not new money. Half of it was money already allocated to support such integration and the rest was, effectively, a transfer of NHS funding on the assumption that demand on the NHS would drop if better social care was provided via a properly integrated service.