title: Cash fix insufficient for people like Enid.
abstract: The additional £1 billion funding to go into social services by 2006 has been warmly welcomed, along with the key reforms announced recently by health secretary Alan Milburn ( pages 4 , 6 ). Increased funding is urgently needed to stabilise the care home market, and specifically to increase the fees that social services can offer. Even with the relaxation in the enforcement of environmental standards, the real costs of providing care home places have long exceeded social services fee rates, and £1 billion was exactly the uplift recommended in the recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation analysis of care home provision costs.