If the full potential of online information portals is to be realised, then the government needs to think about the attendance allowance system.
While social care funding reform appears to be stalling, elsewhere in social care policy, new and interesting developments are emerging off the back of the government's white paper.
One of the most exciting is the push toward online information portals for social care, and the development of e-marketplaces in which individuals and families can identify and buy services.
The government wants all local authorities to radically improve their online information and support services, and has promised £32.5m of start-up funding to help them do so.
However, one of the biggest challenges for this agenda will simply be achieving scale. To remain viable, online information portals will require traffic. And with their higher costs, e-marketplaces for care services will even more urgently need visitors and care users to adopt new ways of commissioning and paying for services.
The Department of Health's own figures suggest local authorities fund home care for 532,000 older people and 350,000 working age adults. If half of these individuals and their families were to be successfully nudged by councils into becoming regular users of online care portals, this will still be less than half a million people.
