General Election 2017 blog: What about social care?
The need for a new settlement for social care.
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.
The need for a new settlement for social care.
Investment in care could create 2.7 times as many jobs as if invested in construction. Care jobs are also imperative to tackling climate change.
This briefing examines through a feminist lens how the UK’s trade policy agenda intersects with public health.
Ahead of the November 2019 Budget, the Health and Social Committee is conducting a short inquiry for the NHS long term plan consultation.