\n<\/p>\n
Louise Casey may have the power of words behind her (The blistering speech that tells me Britain\u2019s social care deadlock can finally be broken, 10 March), but what she\u2019s uncovered is a truth that local authorities have been voicing for years: the national care service will fail unless ministers stabilise the local systems that underpin it.<\/p>\n
Key Cities (a cross-party network of UK local authorities) has long been calling for an urgent funding reset for the social care system. And while the Casey commission\u2019s reforms are welcome, what\u2019s\u00a0still missing is the transition plan\u00a0to enable councils to make this happen. A key part of the government\u2019s NHS 10\u2011year plan must be a significant expansion of joint commissioning, across regional and national scales. This collaboration will finally end the costly push\u2011pull between those who fund and those who deliver care and, vitally, lay the foundations for effective transformation from local to national provision.<\/p>\n
Polly Toynbee is right that councils have been buckling under pressure, but what about what we\u2019ve learned and the solutions we can contribute? Years on the frontline have taught us that prevention is just as important as access to urgent care, and we\u2019ve developed effective models that reduce crisis demand. With the right powers, councils could build the care homes that communities need and test new approaches through innovation hubs and pilots. We also know that none of this is viable without a national workforce strategy that aligns social care pay, training and career pathways to address retention and\u00a0improve career prospects.<\/p>\n
Plugging the hole in council finances might look like a mammoth task, but it\u2019s also a once in a generation opportunity to secure better health outcomes, better lives and wider prosperity. Get the transition right and we can free up council budgets for the housing and regeneration that underpin better health outcomes in the first place. Get it wrong and the new system will inherit the same dysfunctions of the old one. Money is not the problem. Social care for all age groups is a local and community need and responsibility. It should therefore be provided and run locally by relatively small, directly\u00a0responsive, community\u2011based organisations. There is no one ideal model, but a\u00a0national or regional approach will\u00a0not work because the community connection, control and oversight is lost.<\/p>\n Whether we are talking about older people or children, much of the current privatised system of care is of poor quality and high cost, and is crippling local government finances while enriching companies, many of which <\/strong>are based in tax havens. Wages are low and conditions of employment are poor.<\/p>\n The well-off are being fleeced in so-called \u201cluxury\u201d care homes, which provide hotel-type facilities but generally poor care. The not-so-well-off struggle to afford home care and residential\/nursing home fees. And then there are thousands of poor people who can\u2019t get any help at all. Money is not the problem and never has been. There\u2019s plenty of money, but it\u2019s not well spent. It\u2019s going out of the system rather than into it.<\/p>\n Among the savings to be made is closing the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which is very expensive to run and hardly ever uncovers poor care that hasn\u2019t already been spotted by someone else, and even then it takes no action. CQC has stopped visiting many care homes altogether, and has hugely increased the bureaucratic and administrative burden on all social care, making life even more costly and difficult for the small, local providers. I read with interest Polly\u00a0Toynbee\u2019s comments. I\u00a0would\u00a0gladly have paid \u00a320,000 on retirement to avoid the perpetual anxiety over finances that I now face. My husband went into a care home in February 2025. The weekly fee is \u00a31,417.95. He has not had to sell the flat I live in, as it\u2019s my only home. We pay his fees by direct debit and I am watching as our lives\u2019 savings dwindle.<\/p>\n In a few weeks\u2019 time they will be down to \u00a323,250, and then I will have to complete a form and submit evidence that what I enter on it is true with supporting documents: bank statements, confirmation that I\u2019ve liquidated his Isa, paid for water, gas and electricity and so forth. I am 83 and the worries are ruining my old age, which I naively thought, when I was younger, would be restful. I try to economise, though I subscribe to the Guardian because I hope that\u00a0reading it helps keep my brain\u00a0active. As Polly Toynbee suggests, the question of how to fund social care has, like the Grand Old Duke of York\u2019s men, been marched to the top of the hill and down again 22 times and counting since 1997. I\u00a0would suggest that the answer has been tiptoed around, and mooted in various guides, since then, but discarded by gutless governments unable to face tabloid criticism.<\/p>\n After 30 years working in health and social care settings, and 20 years retirement, it seems obvious to me that income tax and national insurance should be merged, as a progressive tax. National insurance was introduced when average life\u00a0expectancy was in the early to mid-50s. It\u2019s now close to 30 years above that, depending on where you live of course.<\/p>\n If Louise Casey is looking\u00a0for options for increasing funding, I\u00a0would suggest that she should give this model serious consideration. What\u2019s not fair about it? That way we\u2019re all chipping in according to\u00a0our means. Louise Casey is right that social care has never had its \u201cBeveridge moment\u201d (Louise Casey: England\u2019s social care system faces \u2018moment of reckoning\u2019, 6 March). When William Beveridge\u2019s report was published in 1942 \u2013 in the middle of a war, with the economy under extreme strain \u2013 people queued outside the Government Stationery Office in Kingsway, London, in their thousands to buy a copy.<\/p>\n What we have had instead, in 22 major reviews over the past 30 years, is something closer to a building that everyone agrees is structurally unsound. Each survey confirms the cracks. Each report recommends underpinning. And each time, the owners decide the moment isn\u2019t quite right, the costs are unclear, and perhaps the next survey will tell\u00a0us something different.<\/p>\n Meanwhile the people living inside it \u2013 elderly people, disabled people and care workers who are paid barely above the legal\u00a0minimum wage \u2013 are left to manage with \u201csticking plasters and\u00a0glue\u201d, in Casey\u2019s own words.<\/p>\n A moment of reckoning, she calls it. With respect, we have had 22 of those. What we have not yet had is a government willing to act on one. Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/strong><\/em>email<\/strong><\/em> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/strong><\/em>letters<\/strong><\/em> section.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Louise Casey may have the power of words behind her (The blistering speech that tells me Britain\u2019s social care deadlock can finally be broken, 10 March), but what she\u2019s uncovered is a truth that local authorities have been voicing for years: the national care service will fail unless ministers stabilise the local systems that underpin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[2568,165,23766,1124,2276,1085,204],"class_list":{"0":"post-46675","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-adult","9":"tag-care","10":"tag-caseys","11":"tag-hope","12":"tag-offers","13":"tag-review","14":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Cllr John Merry<\/strong>
Chair, Key Cities; <\/em> deputy mayor,\u00a0Salford<\/em><\/p>\n
John Burton<\/strong>
Author of Leading Good Care: The\u00a0Task, Heart and Art of Managing Social Care<\/em><\/p>\n
Name and address supplied<\/strong><\/p>\n
Mike Smith<\/strong>
Southampton<\/em><\/p>\n
Simon Spiller<\/strong>
Budleigh Salterton, Devon<\/em><\/p>\n