Some choices about paying for care are simple. Others are highly complex. The Caring Choices events have produced a remarkably consistent pattern of opinion about the simple choices. But the design of more detailed features of a funding system has provoked a multiplicity of views, and considerable division of opinion.

At the fourth Caring Choices day in Leeds on 13 September, views on the basic questions followed a familiar pattern. (more…)

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Vincent Cable yesterday acknowledged that there was a gap in long-term personal care, arguing that support networks around carers need to be strengthened and that carers should be entitled to respite care. His comments were made at a Caring Choices fringe event at the Liberal Democrat conference. (more…)

It is three months since Caring Choices was launched, and its public debate has already exposed the raw emotion that underpins the widespread dissatisfaction with the current state support system for older people. “Are our older people worth less than our other political and financial commitments?,” challenges one contributor.

Much of the resentment, both at the nationwide events and on the website, has focused on a social care system that provides little or no state financial support to those above the means test income/assets thresholds. (more…)

Paying for care needs to be a shared responsibility between the state and individuals, with everyone receiving at least some public funding. This emerging consensus in the Caring Choices debates was supported by the majority of participants at the third event, held in Bristol on 22 June. (more…)

The state needs to increase the amount it spends on caring for older people, but there is wide support for a system in which providing care for an individual in old age is the joint financial responsibility of the state and the individual or family. At the second Caring Choices event, in Birmingham on 25 May, three-quarters of participants accepted that a private financial contribution to the costs of care should be part of the funding solution, while one-fifth said that providing care should be the sole responsibility of the state. (more…)

A new survey shows that two-thirds of the public would prefer to see funding for care services assessed by level of need and not based on ability to pay. The YouGov survey, commissioned by the Caring Choices partners, shows a gap between expectation in social care funding and the current reality of the means-tested system.

Read Caring Choices press release

Today’s edition of Radio 4’s consumer affairs programme You and Yours is on the future of social care. The programme was recorded at the Caring Choices event recently held in Manchester, where the audience put their questions to a panel which included Sir Derek Wanless; Anne Williams of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services; Mervyn Kohler of Help the Aged; Liz Carr, disabled campaigner, broadcaster and comedienne; and Ivan Lewis, the minister responsible for social care.

Details: Radio 4 You and Yours, 12.00pm on Monday 7 May
Full programme details

If you miss the original broadcast you can listen to it online here or read a transcript of the programme.

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