Member News
By Matt Mulley - 28th October 2009
A radical change is needed in the way care services are structured and funded, a joint meeting of all party parliamentary groups has heard.
Care services minister Phil Hope addressed the meeting and spoke about the ongoing consultation on the green paper, Shaping the Future of Care Together.
The UK faces an acute demographic challenge as our population ages. By 2026 there will be 1.7 million more people in need of care services than there are today.
The green paper outlines the government's vision for a National Care Service and what people should expect from it.
It asks the public, and health and care professionals, for their views on what needs to be done - and, crucially, how it should be paid for.
The cost of full-time in-home care can reach into hundreds of thousands of pounds, and care provision across England is currently fragmented and inconsistent.
The green paper sets out a number of proposals to integrate health and social care, with an emphasis on personal budgets and users having individual control over the end-point care they receive.
There are also plans to tackle the complexity of the current system of benefits, which advocacy groups say means many people miss out on the help they need.
These plans include merging some extant allowances to provide more and simpler benefits, both for carers and those in need of care.
Ways of funding the new plan are another aspect open to debate.
The Scottish model of universal free care to all over-65s has proved to have a number of flaws, and would be financially unsustainable, according to the government.
It proposes a combination of private, state and insurance-funded contributions to care costs which will be means-tested.
The minister took questions, which mainly concerned practical issues of implementation, but as ever, a one-hour meeting with a large audience of parliamentarians and interest groups left little room for debate and discussion.
The consultation remains open until 13 November 2009 and the government is strongly urging those who have not contributed to make their voice heard.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd