Holiday breaks for people with MS and their carers

Charities team up to offer respite

Two charities are working together to provide subsidised respite breaks for people with multiple sclerosis in Chigwell, Southampton, and Southport.

Disability charity Vitalise and the MS Society have joined forces to provide the breaks at Vitalise’s three accessible holiday centres, Jubilee Lodge in Chigwell, Netley Waterside House, in Southampton, and Sandpipers, in Southport.

To really care we must focus on the outcomes

A policy introduced under a Labour administration now has far-reaching – and expensive – consequences for the Scottish government that will last long into the future.


17 November 2011

Plans to integrate health and social care across Scotland are being pushed ahead despite the fears of those providing the services that costs will spiral while quality may suffer. Maureen Ferrier reports

The Scottish government has its own directorate for health and social care integration whose purpose is “to ensure that where care is needed it is of high quality and is provided in a timely, efficient and effective way as close to home or a homely setting as possible”.

People with dementia missing out on direct payments

The government wants everyone receiving social care to be offered a personal budget by 2013

Published 17 November 2011

More than three quarters of people with dementia who receive social care support at home are not using direct payments or other personal budgets.

This is despite government plans to roll them out to all people using social care services. As it launches its new report ‘Getting personal? Making personal budgets work for people with dementia’, Alzheimer’s Society is calling for the personal budget system to be adapted to meet the specific needs of people with dementia