Social care needs strategies - not sticking plasters
‘The slammed door is often the only indication her carer has left the building’
When Benjamin Franklin opined that the only two certainties in life were death and taxes, he made no value judgments as to which was preferable. Most of us would, on balance, prefer more taxes – even if some fear the new council tax hike will be the death of us – but only in theory, not necessarily in practice.
We elect our leaders and task them with doing the sums, prioritising the need and channelling resources accordingly to social care, children’s welfare, local infrastructure and so forth.
Call it an abdication of responsibility, call it a mature, functioning democracy, but that’s how society works.
Except it’s not working, is it? My friend’s 15-year-old son is suffering from such severe depression he sometimes can’t get out of bed in the morning. His GCSES are looming and he is too debilitated to revise.
The GP referred him to local children’s services, but there’s nothing they can do – until he self-harms or attempts suicide. His mother is at her wits’ end.
Meanwhile, the elderly friend of my neighbour is housebound and immobile due to complex medical needs, but is still “the full shilling”, as she puts it. She languishes alone waiting for a taciturn care worker – never the same one – to come and thump around her flat, warm her food, give her a perfunctory wash and sort out her medication.
The slammed door is often the only indication that her “carer” has left the building after her allotted 15 minutes. Bleak doesn’t begin to describe it.
Yet 200 miles away, an old family friend of ours claims to be “besotted” with her kindly carer, who sits and chats to her, sometimes brings a slice or two of home-baked cake and treats her with dignity. Sometimes, she pops in just because she’s passing.
I know which service I’d prefer, but the way things are going, I probably won’t have a choice.
Adult social care is broken. Low pay, low morale and low status have led to the haemorrhaging of staff, many of whom take home the minimum wage of £7.50 an hour. The National Audit Office has described it as “a Cinderella service” and stated that, without a valued and rewarded workforce, adult social care “cannot fulfil its crucial role of supporting elderly and vulnerable people in society”.
Children’s services and social care are the two greatest pressures on our local councils, hence the decision by 95per cent of local authorities to raise council taxes.
But even a £100 increase on council tax, however hard it hits householders, will be a drop in the ocean.
There will be an estimated £2.5billion gap in social care funding by 2019-20, and that needs to come from central government rather than left to the distraction of local authorities.
Now that Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, has been given the social care brief, he must surely see the wisdom of proper, joined-up investment, not least the impact it would have on the annual NHS winter emergencies.
Decent social care not only plays a preventative role in keeping older people out of hospital, but enables them to be safely discharged, freeing up vital beds.
We need strategic thinking, not sticking plasters; placing the onus on to local authorities smacks of the very worst sort of political cowardice.
Local councils will pay the price when it is the Government that must bear the responsibility for a funding crisis that has been many years in the making.
Last year’s British social attitudes survey, carried out by the National Centre for Research, revealed that 48per cent of people were in favour of higher taxation and more spending, up from 32per cent in 2010, when drastic budget cuts marked the coalition’s vision of austerity.
Of those willing to pay more tax, 80 per cent wanted the NHS to receive funding, followed by 70per cent who cited schools and 60per cent who sought improved policing.
That sounds about right to me. Speaking as a punter with a keen interest in all three of these sectors, I would very much like to know why I can’t get a GP appointment for weeks at a time and the local secondary school sends the students home early to avoid staff costs.
Judging by the sirens, the local rozzers are on the case, but cuts have led Jeremy Corbyn to clash with Theresa May over lies, damned lies and statistics. It takes a lot for the Labour leader to rouse himself from his torpor, and I rarely (never) believe a word the man says.
Nobody wants to see Corbyn have any actual power. I shudder to imagine it, in fact. The man is a dangerous ideologue.
But I have a suspicion that his anti-austerity policies are going to gain evermore traction as we watch the pillars of our society – health, education, law and order – start to crumble beneath the weight of cuts.
We need this Government to be truthful about the challenges it faces – and, therefore, we all face – and offer us a coherent vision, rather than lip service.
People like me don’t care about ideological dismantling of the state apparatus. We care about hospitals and our elderly parents, our children’s future and safe streets. Taxation is not a dirty word.
If the alternative is the slow death of the institutions I hold dear, I choose taxes every time.