Caring Choices hosted a lively debate on the future funding of long-term care at the Labour party conference on 25 September. Extracts from the event are now available for you to listen to. Read the rest of this article »
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. Read the rest of this article »
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. Read the rest of this article »
Three-quarters of the public are prepared to pay 1p extra on income tax in order to fund better and fairer care for older people, according to a YouGov survey published last week. An additional 1p in the pound on income tax would raise £2 billion, which would pay for 80 per cent of all care home fees and for domiciliary care, according to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Read the rest of this article »
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. Read the rest of this article »
Shortly I’ll be 76 and my wife 73. She’s been afflicted with Alzheimer’s for about 12 years.
For the first seven years I cared for her at our home in the countryside. Our nightmare began on 1 October 2001. She’d entered the stage of losing special awareness, which results in falls. Read the rest of this article »
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. Read the rest of this article »
Almost 10 years ago, I was privileged to be asked by the then Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, to be a member of the Royal Commission on Long Term Care Funding; this Commission was set up by the incoming Labour government to fulfil an election pledge. Read the rest of this article »
