With little more than a week until local
elections, Labour is today (Wednesday 25 April)
maintaining pressure on the Government to
acknowledge the instability in the care system
created by their local government spending
decisions.
Labour will call for the Government to meet
the funding gap for social care this year and for
the rest of this Parliament using an Opposition
Day Motion.
MP, Labour’s
Shadow Cabinet Minister for Social Care will
outline in an Opposition Day Debate in the House
of Commons the damage the Tories have done to the
social care system through eight years of cuts to
council budgets.
She will explain how diminishing care fees
that councils are able to pay in light of these
cuts have further destabilised a care sector that
the Association of Directors of Adult Social Care
have described as “perilously fragile.”
Two thirds of councils have seen care home
closures and more than 47% of councils
surveyed have had home care contracts handed back
to them. Four Seasons, a major chain of care
homes had run into financial problems and a few
days ago Allied Healthcare, one of the country’s
biggest providers of homecare announced it was
seeking a rescue plan with its creditors. This
financial instability of large providers has
caused uncertainty about the future of thousands
of vulnerable people in need of care.
Barbara will highlight “the heroic efforts
of Labour councils to try to protect adult social
care in the face of swingeing budget cuts from
this Government,” including the work of Salford
City Council, Manchester City Council, Lambeth
Council and Southwark Council acting to offer a
real living wage to care staff.
MP will
say:
“It has been six months since this House
called on the Tory Government to commit the extra
funding needed to ease the crisis currently
affecting social care. Six months of missed
opportunities for this Government to bring more
stability to our “perilously fragile” care
system. Six months in which the situation has
deteriorated further.
“ told a
conference of social workers in March that
‘we need to do better on social
care’. This Government has had eight
years to do better on social care.”
On carers, MP will
say:
“The Government hasn’t even developed an
updated National Strategy for Carers, scrapping
the planned Strategy last October. And since then
the Government has even failed to publish a
promised Action Plan.”
MP will also
highlight Labour’s pledges to ease the social
care crisis:
· £8
billion extra for social care across this
Parliament with an extra £1 billion to ease the
crisis in social care this year.
· Implementing
the real living wage for all care staff
· Ensuring
care staff are paid for travel time
· Scrapping
15-minute care visits
· Ending
zero hours contracts for care staff
· Implementing
a maximum limit or cap on care costs at a lower
level than originally set in the Care Act and
will also raise the financial asset threshold to
a higher level than it is under the current
system.
Ends
Editor's Notes:
-
Motion for the Opposition Day
Debate:
That this House
notes that Government cuts to council budgets
have resulted in a social care funding crisis;
further notes that Government failure to deal
with this crisis has pushed the funding problem
onto councils and council tax payers and has
further increased the funding gap for social
care; recognises with concern that there is
unacceptable variation in the quality and
availability of social care across the country
with worrying levels of unmet need for social
care; and calls on the Government to meet the
funding gap for social care this year and for the
rest of this Parliament.
2. 47% of councils surveyed
had care home contracts handed back to them
- https://www.adass.org.uk/media/5994/adass-budget-survey-report-2017.pdf
