High levels of help and support are being offered to Dorset’s adult population – with bigger increases in need expected in the years to come.

Among the prediction for the next ten years is a more than doubling of the numbers suffering from dementia to around 16,000; a 33 per cent increase in those with learning disabilities and a 38 per cent rise in demand for home care.

Over the same period the number of over 65s in the Dorset Council area will rise by 23per cent.

Right now the council is paying £330,000 each day on meeting care needs and has seen the number of people requiring council-funded care after leaving hospital rise from 12 per week prior to Covid to 35.

Despite the figures most people have to self-fund their care with the council only stepping in to help financially when an individual has little money left.

The annual budget for the service is expected to rise to just over £143m in the coming financial year with in-house savings of around £6million expected to be found.

Dorset councillors were told that despite this, cost pressures, including energy costs, inflation and pay, would add more than £19m to the cost of running services from April.

Examples given to the people and health scrutiny committee this week include the cost of hospital discharges alone rising from £4m in 2019 to £15m in the current year, while individual mental health packages have increased from an average of £492 to £956 over the same period.

Despite the financial worries executive director for the service, Viv Broadhurst, told councillors that changes had already been made to cope with the expected demands and more were being planned, including additional support for the social care workforce where, typically, a third of workers leave each year.

She said more measures were also proposed for early intervention to prevent, or delay, hospital admissions, and in making reablement packages more widely available through Care Dorset to help people continue to live independently.

Portfolio holder for the service Cllr Peter Wharf said some of the measures would involve greater spending in the short term – but should produce long-term gains by keeping people out of hospital and improving their quality of life.

Committee chair Cllr Gill Taylor said she welcomed an extra £11.5m in the budget for care work but said she worried that it might not be enough if staff could not be found to support people.

Around three quarters of Dorset Council’s income from local council taxpayers is being spent on just five per cent of the county’s population – according to a Weymouth councillor.

Cllr Brian Heatley said the combined budgets of children’s and adult services amounted to about £220million a year – but only directly benefitted around 5per cent of residents.

He said he could see why some people found that odd – although he stressed that he, like others, was keen to maintain standards.

Cllr Heatley suggested that other ways might be found to help the residents, possibly by encouraging people who were living in homes which were too big for them and too cold, to be offered incentives to move to smaller properties which were more energy efficient. He said he would also favour more subsidy of public transport.

Cllr Heatley said the amount the council spent on both housing and public transport were small, compared to the bigger budget departments – just £4m on housing and £2.5m in bus subsidies.

“There is a whole agenda there that, maybe, we are not giving enough attention to,” he said.