Social care system needs an overhaul

I fully agree with Alison Thain (Feedback, August 6). She is absolutely right that the whole social care system is broken.

John McDonnell recently stated in the Guardian (July 20) that years of underfunding have put our older people and disabled people at risk – especially in the likelihood of a second wave of Coronavirus hitting us.

He, and a cross-party group of MPs, are calling for a National Care System. He says ‘we need the urgent nationalisation of care to establish a National Care and support service to work alongside the NHS.’

Influential people such as Tory Peer Ros Altmann and Head of NHS England, Sir Simon Stevens, are calling for the same.

However, the Government is considering plans to simply shift social care over to the NHS in a bureaucratic exercise. This will mean taking away local powers and centralising them.

If social care was nationalised instead and working alongside the NHS, it could be locally managed. Of course each authority has the knowledge of its communities which national level simply lacks.

It would need to be adequately resourced. The staff would have proper pay, training and conditions of service. It would lead to a more professional and sustainable service. At present we have a poorly resourced, highly privatised service, where turnover of staff is high.

It is morally wrong that people, like Ms Thain’s mother, are left to make up the shortfall in revenue and so subsidise others.

We know councils cannot pay economic charges due to underfunding from the central government.

Councils should be leading the charge to change the system and not simply trying to manage a dysfunction mess.

COUN CATH Davis, Preston Ward, North Tyneside Council