Tag Archives: social care

How the ‘perfect storm of cuts’ is shrinking one woman’s life choices

Rose Fernandes’s council wants to reduce care for her autistic daughter and her mother with dementia, and a cap on housing benefit could force the family to live apart

 

Rose Fernandes with her daughter Crystal, who is autistic and faces having her time with a carer cut from nine hours a day to four hours a week. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

As politicians shrink the state, Rose Fernandes’s life choices dwindle. Her day is sandwiched between caring for her autistic 25-year-old daughter Crystal and her 83-year-old mother, Maria, who suffers from dementia. But since 2010, she has been caught in a whirlwind of cuts, reducing her life to a series of arguments – in and out of lawyers’ offices – to preserve her way of life.

It began two years ago when her local council in Brent, north-west London, said it wanted to reduce the number of hours it would pay a carer to look after her daughter from nine hours a day to just four hours a week. But Fernandes says the day-to-day care for Crystal is constant – she needs to be washed, dressed, fed, taken to the toilet and watched all the time because she is not aware of everyday dangers.

Queen’s speech 2012: Draft bill on social care announced

Who should pay to look after the elderly and disabled?

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News


The Queen’s Speech

A draft bill on overhauling care and support for elderly and disabled people in England has been announced in the Queen’s Speech.

The bill will put “people in control of their care and give them greater choice,” ministers say.

The contentious issue of how social care is paid for is still unclear.

This week, charities and the Local Government Association called for radical change to prevent people being left “living in misery and fear”.

Three million unpaid carers spending own money supporting elderly

Almost three million people spend more than £1,200 of their own money every year caring for an elderly loved-one, a study suggests.

By , Social Affairs Editor

8:00AM BST 07 May 2012

A quarter of the population is involved in providing some form of care for older family or friends, it finds.

And almost one in five of them regularly spend at least £100 a month.