Social care challenge appears to be getting worse – By Silva Homes | Care Industry News

Indeed Social Care is in crisis and has been for many years, this is down to a number of factors

lack of Government investment
abysmal staff salaries
lack of care workers
unsocial hours
poor working conditions
no staff sick pay scheme
and many others

I put lack of Government investment at the top because if this was solved then some of the others could also be.

As to investment in social care, this has never been sufficient, but 10 years of austerity cuts and now COVID-19 have made the crisis very more serious.

So, lets look at social care, before 1970 social care was administered by a ‘mishmash’ of organisations

local authorities
charities
voluntary sector
health
and many others

But in 1970 the Government of the day decided to bring all social care to be administered by local authorities, but true to form, the Government did not provide anywhere near the funding that was required and over the years the gap from what funding is provided to what is actually required has been increasing.

Many Governments in the last few years have promised to solve the funding process and a considerable amount of the work required as already been done.

In fact, in the David Cameron Governments they were prepared to go ahead in 2015, but decided to defer until April 2020.

Now in April 2020 we were in the COVID-19 pandemic and still are, so was this the reason for no action, who knows.

But, urgent action needs to be taken, not just for care homes, but the whole of Social care which includes home care, respite, supported living, hospices for both children and adults as well as care homes.

Well some action has occurred for in July 2020, an advisor was appointed on the proposal for the NHS to take over social care.

So, action has been taken, but how is it proceeding, who knows?

Governments are ‘ace’ at putting proposals forward and creating working groups, but they are not good at putting proposals into action and thereby solve the crisis and they could well be lost in the ‘black hole’ of Government.

To ensure actions are finalised, I created the petition, Solve the crisis in Social Care, https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/solve-the-crisis-in-social-care.

Please consider looking at the petition and, if you agree, please sign and share.

Should you require more information this can be found here.

 

 

Source: Social care challenge appears to be getting worse – By Silva Homes | Care Industry News

Lockdown has brought families of learning disabled people to their knees | Learning disability | The Guardian

The support system so many rely on was struggling before the coronavirus crisis. Now it is truly broken

Source: Lockdown has brought families of learning disabled people to their knees | Learning disability | The Guardian

The first lesson from my life as a carer? There is such a thing as society | Anna Cosslett | Opinion | The Guardian

It’s leaflets at the moment. If my son sees any, in a cafe for instance, he wants them all. Later he will want to go through them and then destroy each one, tearing them into tiny pieces. We’ve got him down to a maximum of three. This is progress. When he lived at home, it was books – each one to be looked through swiftly, then reshelved on the other side of the room. If we went outside, every item on display in the two village shops had to be named three times. I stopped going outside. I stopped trying to speak to anyone on the phone, because my son knew that if he stood next to me and shrieked like an agonised seagull no one could hear a thing.

Labour MP urges care firm to scrap charge for workers who call in sick

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I have spent a large part of my life as a carer for my son, whom I shall call Huw (he is now a vulnerable adult) who has severe autism and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). I was helped for part of that time by my daughter, Rhiannon. There are around 7 million carers in the UK – that’s one in 10 people – and that doesn’t include parents whose children aren’t sick or disabled. So many carers’ stories go untold. Why? Probably because it’s exhausting, especially if lack of sleep is part of the picture (typical in cases of autism). It may be because unaffected people feel uncomfortable thinking about it, but it’s possible that they just don’t think about it, full stop – because our stories aren’t out there. And yet it’s possible we will all be carers at some point.

Many people will find, at some stage in their life, that they will need to assume responsibility for someone who cannot care for themselves. Caring is a vital part of our society, and for most people it cannot be outsourced to an expensive nursing home or private staff.

Yet caring remains undervalued. A catchphrase from the Thatcher era, seeking to justify the destruction of many social support systems, was that “spoon-feeding only teaches the shape of the spoon”. This ignores the fact that people from babyhood to frail old age often do actually need to be spoon-fed. By insisting that society did not exist, the Tories set in motion a pretence that such needs do not exist, and the people who cater for them were not worthy of recognition, beyond some vague adulation of “family values”.

Caring can either break you or make you a stronger, wiser person. Many people, most of them women, can be broken by the burdens they have had to take on, now that society has largely turned its back on their needs as support systems for sick and disabled people and their families have been further dismantled.

 

Source: The first lesson from my life as a carer? There is such a thing as society | Anna Cosslett | Opinion | The Guardian

How Far Can NHS Cuts Go?

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This is the Lancaster family – Nicola and Ian have spent ten years looking after their severely-disabled child 24-7, their only break coming once a month, when he went to a respite centre for the weekend. Now the centre is closing, because there’s no #NHS money to run it – and this is not an isolated case….

Source: How Far Can NHS Cuts Go? – Paul Moss  @BBCPaulMoss

This is indeed not an isolated incident and is not only related to Children’s Social Care and health services, but also to Adult Social Care and health services.

While there are needs for those children and adults who are in need of care and are entitled to Assessments of Needs, the Carers themselves also have needs and they are entitled to their own Carers Assessments for carers of children being * The Children and Families Act 2014 amends the Children Act 1989 and for carers of adults *The Care Act 2014. Here are some Care Act Factsheets.

When it comes to funding where needs have been assessed then that need should be provided and this should not be delayed pending disputes between social services and health.

* Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Council’s ‘unacceptable failings’ left struggling family without respite

Croydon council has apologised for leaving a grandmother for two years without respite

Source: Council’s ‘unacceptable failings’ left struggling family without respite

Social care: what’s in a name? | The King’s Fund

Katie Mantell argues we need to do more to raise understanding of what social care is and how it’s provided and funded.

Source: Social care: what’s in a name? | The King’s Fund

Who provides social care?

Care planning failings left parents without support for disabled son

Bromley council will pay out more than a thousand pounds to the parents of a disabled teenager after care planning failings left them without respite support for five months. A local government ombudsman investigation found the couple were left to cope alone after the council failed to make arrangements to support their son’s transition from […]

Source: Care planning failings left parents without support for disabled son

Respite Care

Respite

Source: Respite Care