The 2025 ADASS Spring Survey paints a familiar but sobering picture: rising demand, tightening budgets, and a growing sense that adult social care is being stretched to its limits.

And yet, beneath the stark statistics lies a deeper question, not just about money, but about how we use it.

A system under strain but also at a crossroads

In many ways, the pressures councils face today are not new. But the intensity is. A record-breaking £774 million overspend on adult social care in 2024/25 marks a worrying escalation.

Directors report that packages of care are growing more complex, particularly for working-age adults. At the same time, councils are spending less on prevention than at any point since 2021. Rather than signalling a loss of commitment to prevention, the reduction in funding points to the pressure of balancing urgent care demands with long-term goals.

In this environment, how we allocate funding matters more than ever. Not only to balance books, but to preserve the values of transparency, fairness, and person-centred support that underpin the Care Act.

The problem isn’t just pressure but visibility

One of the challenges highlighted by the ADASS survey is the growing gap between assessed need and financial confidence. Only 21% of Directors feel assured that their budgets can meet the needs of working-age adults.

What this reveals is not just a funding shortfall, but a visibility shortfall. Many councils still lack the infrastructure to reliably understand:

• Where the biggest cost pressures originate
• How much care is being commissioned reactively rather than proactively
• Whether care packages are aligned to current best practice
• What trends are emerging across service types, cohorts, and geographiesWithout that clarity, even the most well-intentioned funding strategies risk becoming reactive and inconsistent.

This isn’t about data for data’s sake, it’s about having the tools to connect assessment, practice, and financial planning in real time.

Rethinking resource allocation as a strategic lever

The idea of a Resource Allocation System (RAS) is not new. But the context has shifted. In 2025, a RAS isn’t just a way to generate an indicative budget – it’s potentially a platform for system reform.

When implemented well, a modern RAS can support councils to:

• Understand where and why costs are rising
• Detect patterns (e.g. high use of 24-hour care, or divergence between estimated and actual budgets) that warrant strategic attention
• Build fairer, more transparent personal budgets grounded in assessed need
• Support commissioning and market shaping through aggregated, cohort-level insight

This turns funding into something more than a response mechanism. It becomes a planning tool, capable of aligning upstream investment, frontline practice, and long-term sustainability.

Looking across, not just inward

One underexplored asset in this conversation is the power of shared insight. Councils often compare notes informally, but what if that comparison could be rooted in data?

With over 20% of councils now using shared RAS platforms, there’s a growing opportunity to:

• Benchmark cost and need profiles against comparable authorities
• Separate what’s truly local from what’s systemic
• Inform regional or ICS-level commissioning strategies using collective evidence

In an increasingly integrated health and care landscape, cross-boundary insight is currency.

Beyond the budget and reframing what funding is for

Ultimately, conversations about adult social care funding tend to circle back to the question of “how much.” But in 2025, we might also ask: what are we asking funding to do?

Are we allocating resources simply to meet need as it presents today? Or are we using funding strategically, to build community capacity, support unpaid carers, and enable more person-centred, preventative models of care?

To do the latter, we need more than spreadsheets. We need tools that bridge finance, commissioning, and practice. Tools that make complexity visible, and support evidence-based decisions.

That’s not just a matter of efficiency. It’s a matter of values.

A moment for reflection and redesign

The ADASS survey captures a sector under immense strain – but also a sector full of ideas, innovation, and determination.

Many local authorities are already thinking differently about funding, and not just how to find it, but how to make it work harder, fairer, and more transparently.

For those councils, systems like Connected Funding aren’t a procurement decision. They’re a strategic commitment to foresight over firefighting.

Because in a system under pressure, clarity isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity.