Tag Archives: social care
Care charities ‘would be subject to new corporate abuse law’
A new offence of corporate neglect
Governance | Tania Mason | 17 Jan 2013
Care charities have lined up to support a proposed new law to hold care providers from all sectors – including charities – criminally accountable for neglect and abuse in hospitals and care homes.
Former care services minister Paul Burstow introduced a new Bill in Parliament yesterday that would amend the Health and Social Care Act 2008 to include a new offence of corporate neglect. It attempts to ensure that abuse of the kind suffered by residents of the notorious Winterbourne View care home can never happen again.
Under the Bill, corporate bodies – whether private sector corporations, public sector entities, or charities – would face unlimited fines, remedial orders and publicity orders. Such penalties mirror the sanctions introduced in the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007.
Disabled people 'could be forgotten' amid social care reform
A third of people getting social care are younger people with disabilities
By Nick Triggle Health correspondent, BBC News
Much of the focus on care has been centred around the crisis facing the elderly.
But a coalition of charities has warned people with disabilities under the age of 65 are being neglected too.
They said the squeeze on council care meant many were already missing out.
And the groups, including Mencap, Scope, the National Autistic Society, Leonard Cheshire Disability and Sense, warned the situation could deteriorate under the forthcoming reform of the system.
Ministers are soon expected to announce a cap will be placed on the costs people face for care.
While our pensioners are living in poverty, should we really be sending more money abroad?
Funding the care for our vulnerable elderly is an issue of morality, not charity, writes Tracey Crouch
By Tracey Crouch
1:49PM GMT 15 Jan 2013
Last week, Parliament spent a full afternoon debating the extremely important issue of dementia. Colleagues from across the House spoke with real passion and emotion, sometimes based on personal experience, about a dreadful condition which in just a few years time will affect over a million people, or one in three of those aged over 65.
Most people will already know someone who has dementia or who will suffer from dementia in the future, and so how politicians deal with our ageing population and all the related issues that it brings is a real life electoral issue. People judge a government on its morality, and what can be more important than how we treat our vulnerable elderly?
It breaks my heart to hear about those in their retirement living in poverty. The Government has done the right thing to introduce the triple lock into pension increases, maintain the commitment to the winter fuel allowance and continue with cold weather payments. But with adult social care budgets being cut and a care funding crisis looming, so much more needs to be done, and it is time we recalibrated our spending priorities to ensure that taxpayers money, stretched as it is, goes into providing the services we need at home, not financing projects abroad.
