Social Care for the elderly in England
Social Care is devolved to national governments and this briefing focuses on social provision in England.
Report
In this research, WBG and the New Economics Foundation calculate the cost of all the reforms needed to create a high-quality, universal care.
Successive governments have done little or nothing to tackle worsening conditions in social care, for either recipients of care or care workers despite promises to ‘fix’ the sector. On 1 December, the government set out a strategy to ‘Put People at the Heart of Care’. The strategy sets out a transformative vision for care to provide ‘support to those who need it so that as many people as possible can live the life they want to lead’.
Such a transformation could be a vital in building a more caring society post-Covid, where people with additional needs arising from illness, disability, or age have equal chances and increased control over their lives. The problem is that the government has failed to outline a realistic vision with realistic funding in order to deliver this strategy.
In this research the Women’s Budget Group and the New Economics Foundation calculate the cost of all the reforms needed to create a high-quality, universal care service with well-paid care workers, and show that the government’s new health and social care levy would only raise 6% of the funds needed to create such a service.
Social Care is devolved to national governments and this briefing focuses on social provision in England.
The case for investment in care as a better post-pandemic economic stimulus than investment in construction.
WBG has long argued that a settlement to address the crises in health and social care would best be funded by Government borrowing.
Launching ‘Towards a New Deal for Care and Carers’ at the House of Lords