Responding to a new Association of Directors of Adult Social Services survey, the director of policy and strategy and interim deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, Miriam Deakin, said:

"These latest survey results show we have an overstretched social care system in need of more support, funding and reform.

"Fixing the serious problems faced by the social care sector, including severe staff shortages, is right for service users, families and our much-valued workforce of carers – and it also will help significantly to ease mounting pressure on the NHS and across the whole health and care system.

"Without adequate funding the social care sector, inextricably linked with the NHS, will continue to struggle with a serious lack of capacity – particularly in home care – with major knock-on effects for health services. Hospitals struggle to discharge patients who are well enough to recover at or closer to home, which in turn badly affects timely hospital admissions, including in A&E and the handover of patients from waiting ambulances."