Tag Archives: carers
The Government’s Social Care White Paper and White Paper and Draft Care and Support Bill
Part Two: Food for Thought
Having finished my rant about the Government’s lack of backbone to adequately fund social care, here are some of the important points that were raised in the Social Care White Paper and Draft Care and Support Bill.
From 2015 the government will introduce national standards on access to care services. At the moment each council can set its own criteria, creating a so called postal lottery. National standards will help people to understand what they are entitled to.
The ticking time bomb of elderly care costs
There is a postcode lottery in this county on care
OVER the last week, the reality of perhaps this county’s greatest challenge — how are we going to pay for the care of our increasing number of older people – has begun to dawn.
And as I have written before, I regard this challenge as Gloucestershire’s demographic time bomb.
Now, that time bomb really is ticking.
But I am afraid that the government promises when they announced their White Paper on care for the elderly last week seem to be very hollow.
Use left-over NHS cash to pay for elderly care, say MPs
Left-over cash from NHS budgets should be handed over to local councils to pay for care for the elderly and disabled, according to MPs.
By John Bingham, Social Affairs Editor
7:00AM BST 16 Jul 2012
A cross-party group of MPs and peers is calling on the Government to allow money allocated to health but left unspent to be used for social care rather than being simply absorbed back into Treasury funds.
They calculate that less than half of the current annual NHS underspend would be enough to solve the immediate funding crisis in social care.
The call comes in a report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Local Government, chaired by the Tory MP Heather Wheeler.
It comes in the week after the Government set out plans to overhaul care for the elderly.
