Category Archives: Older care

Carer raises fears over changes to social care funding

April 12, 2013   Carers, Older care, ukcuts

 

Skipton carer raises fears over changes to social care funding

7:00am Friday 12th April 2013 in News  By Matt Cornish, Editor

A Craven carer has met with a Government minister to discuss changes in adult social care funding.

From April 2016, the Government is intending to place a £72,000 cap upon what any individual has to pay for their social care costs.

But Tim Quelch, a Skipton carer, believes that the proposed changes could divert precious resources away from poorer social care users, placing extra financial pressure on unpaid carers – spouses, partners, families and friends.

The Government’s plan follows pressure from families whose loved ones have been forced to sell their homes to pay for their care costs, typically when they are admitted to care homes in later life.

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Banks offered new guidance on dealing with family carers

April 3, 2013   Cancer, Carers, dementia, Multiple Sclerosis, Older care

Banks offered new guidance on dealing with carers

  • By: Joanna Faith
  • 03 Apr 2013
  • All banks and building societies in the UK have today received new guidance to support carers and relatives who manage accounts on behalf of other people.
care-home-web

The framework – and the complementary consumer guide which accompanies it – aims to help these people have a better and more consistent experience, reducing their burden at what can be a very difficult time.

Arranging to run an account on behalf of a loved one is a challenge faced by thousands of people every year. Since 2007, 536,941 Lasting Powers of Attorney have been registered in the UK to manage property and affairs, which includes the management of financial matters. In 2012 there were around 800,000 people in the UK suffering from dementia with this number forecast to rise to more than a million by 2021.

The guidance framework has been jointly developed by the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG), the British Bankers Association (BBA) and the Building Societies Association (BSA), working in collaboration with the Law Society, Alzheimer’s Society, Solicitors for the Elderly and Age UK.

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Care in Japan

April 1, 2013   Carers, disability, Older care

Artwork made by Japanese patients in care comes to London

Much of the work on show at Wellcome Collection, including an embroidered suit, was produced in therapy classes

 

An artwork by 17-year-old Japanese artist Norimitsu Kokubo, Shanghai Disneyland of the Future.

Works of art made of scraps of thread, off-cuts of paper, and cardboard boxes salvaged from a care home’s kitchen and carefully smoothed flat have gone on display at the Wellcome Collection in London, in the first exhibition in the UK of Japanese “outsider art”.

When curator Shamita Sharmacharja visited Japan to speak to the artists who made the works she found them slightly surprised that their work was considered art. To them it was just what they do, often in almost all their waking hours.

“In Japan, the concept of outsider art does not really exist,” she said. “It is something they are learning about from European interest in it.”

Outsider art was coined as a term to describe art created beyond mainstream culture, such as in mental health institutions, although it now more generally defines work made by artists without art school training and outside the market. In the Wellcome show all the work has been made in institutions or day care centres.

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