Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.
Our social care system is in crisis, according to the annual review published by the Commission for Social Care Inspection this week. Disabled people and the frail elderly face a postcode lottery as local authorities tighten the screws ever further on the provision of social care. The report revealed that councils are implementing increasingly strict eligibility criteria, excluding many vulnerable adults who would previously have been eligible for support.
Fewer frail elderly people are being supported in their own homes, despite a 3% increase in those over 75. Shockingly, some local councils are excluding those who are unable to either wash or dress themselves independently. The burden of care is falling on female relatives families who are under increasing pressure to provide both social and personal care for their elderly relatives.
The social care minister, Ivan Lewis, has made loud noises about the system being both ‘unfair and inconsistent’ and has announced a government investigation into the findings. You might even be convinced that the government was unaware of the shambolic way we support those with social care needs, although personally I think he doth protest a little too much. Try a little experiment. Google ‘social care crisis’ and you will see similar reports going back at least a decade. Or ask a social worker.
Why are we failing so spectacularly to support those members of our communities with high care needs?
As an ex-social worker I have heard many, many (and then some more) complaints and back-of-a-fag-packet explanations from people who are appalled to find that they fail to meet the eligibility criteria for support. A small selection:
I suspect the real reason is more complex, and one that we all ultimately have to take responsibility for.
Anyone over 40 may remember a quaint old thing called consensus politics. Between 1945 and 1979 the major political parties had a tacit consensus regarding the role of the state and its responsibilities. The welfare state and the national health service were born, and subsequent governments understood that the state would provide social and health care to all its citizens, to be paid for through direct taxation and national insurance contributions.
In 1979 we voted overwhelmingly for a woman who sought to abandon the political consensus with her zealous commitment to free-market monetarism. ‘There is no such thing as society’ declared Thatcher, and then proceeded to dismantle the mechanisms which supported it. Rampant individualism replaced the concept of a co-operative society in which the economically active members support the needs of those who are vulnerable through frailty or disability. Apparently we were only interested in government's ability to run an efficient economy. Apparently, we still are.
The simple truth is that as a society we appear to not want to pay the taxes required to maintain a half decent standard of social care. We complain bitterly at increases in our council tax, and vote according to who will give us the lowest tax burden and maintain an efficient economy. We just don’t seem to care about the frail elderly or disabled people, and local government becomes the scapegoat as it struggles to manage with increasingly tough settlements from the centre.
Social care has been in crisis since case law established that local authorities have the right to meet the needs of vulnerable adults within available resources.
....and so a new blog is born.
Confessions shall remain for those serious moments, but our little blogging family is surely crying out for a family blog.
See you there....
Ta-daaa!
As Badger has helpfully explained, I have been tidying my room. For three months. It was exceptionally untidy. I promise I shall be more careful in future.
I have vowed never to move house again, which is no great loss as we appear to have happened upon the most remote yet beautiful place in the Yorkshire Dales. We have neither mains drainage nor a mains water supply, and the drinking water goes a peculiar shade of brown each time it rains. Apparently it’s the peat. The milkman is 85 years old and can neither reverse his little van nor remember your order. The postie – who I am convinced is a spy in his spare time, which we all know posties get plenty of - delivers the Guardian, and the Sunday papers arrive via a very complex chain of command involving two local post offices and a man from the next village who gets paid 50p per delivery. The main road in to the village floods after a nano-second of fine drizzle, and the road to the local supermarket has only just been up-graded from a farm track and is beset by random sheep.
I suspect we are really living in Brigadoon, and we shall only emerge from the mist once every hundred years.
Badger, Stray, Master Melancholy and I have taken the population of our little village up to the grand total of 51. Statistically this means there are another three gays in the village and one who is just a tiny bit bi-curious. We haven’t met them yet but Badger is on the trail.
We have been made more than welcome in this tiny little corner of the Yorkshire Dales, despite the fact that the village has more than a touch of the Royston Vasey’s about it. I suspected, however, that people were talking about us when the landlord of the local pub said “so you’re the ones we’re all talking about”. Thank goodness for my ability to read the subtle nuances of communication.
There has been a general suspicion that we are involved in some kind of m̩nage a trois Рwhich apparently is something that French people and southerners do Рso the truth has been distinctly less shocking. A gay couple. Whatever. Contrary to popular opinion there appears to be no more or less bigotry in rural communities than in more diverse urban ones. I suspect we might arouse rather more prejudice by being vegetarian. How disappointing.
I have a theory that everyone in the village has a story to tell. Most people here are ‘off-cumdens’ which is a quaint old Yorkshire word for anyone who can’t trace their village ancestry back to the Domesday book. Never let it be said that rural Yorkshire is parochial. Apparently we are the most interesting off-cumdens to hit the place since the second world war, which makes many of our encounters here eminently bloggable.
And so a new blog is to be born. I know I have been absent for an inordinate amount of time, but birthing is a demanding process, even if it is only a blog.
Watch this space.
PS thanks for all the lovely comments. I had no idea you cared so much x
So....
...is what happens when we are busy making other plans.
I am taking a short break.
See you in ten days time....
