Express & Star

LETTER: Government must fix social care crisis

Those who form the next government will have a moral obligation to sort out the crisis that community care is now in, with immediate effect, as it cannot be ignored any longer.

Published
Government must fix social care crisis

Under May’s regime and Cameron’s before her, this vital issue has been largely ignored to the point that it is now close to total collapse with May obsessed by wanting to go down in history as being the PM who took us out of the EU and who launched HS2, one suspects to the obscurity of everything else, including the suffering of those who require such care.

Surely, governments have a moral obligation to safeguard such needs.

Meanwhile and all too often the Government blames local authorities for the lack of investment in care, when they know full well that it is their responsibility particularly having deliberately unburdened themselves from what they saw as a millstone around their neck and dumping it into the lap of local authorities, under the guise of “Devolvement of Power to the regions, vastly increasing their workload, while dramatically reducing their budgets, knowing full well that this could not work .

As a result, those left with such responsibilities at social services are at breaking point, having to slice the cake into so many pieces while managers tear their hair out worrying about where else they can make any further financial cut backs without adversely affecting levels of care? Sadly a point already surpassed !

Meanwhile, why has the green paper relating to care been delayed for so long? Could it be that having now realised what a desperate state it is now in, it will require billions of pounds in order to pull it back to the required standard, which the vast amounts of the money currently being wasted on “HS2” could/should have been used, among other things. As and when the elusive green paper does eventually appear, it will inevitably implement “personal financial contributions” from those who receive care. This must not go as far as “forcing people to sell the roof from over their head”, the idea of which is a national disgrace that all of those involved must resist. People’s property is not a gifted asset but something that many have scrimped and saved in order to obtain and should be able to retain and not be subjected to the additional anxiety that this would cause, in addition to the illnesses and disabilities from which they already suffer and who did not ask to be ill in the first place.

Allan Kyte

Great Wyrley

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