4 July 2019 – CLGdotTV: What now for social care? Will the Green Paper ever arrive?

Former Care Minister Paul Burstow and Joel Charles of Future Care Capital set out their hopes for the much anticipated social care green paper but the discussion suggests that these hopes may be running ahead of expectations….

The Green Paper will present an opportunity for what has become, through long delay, a desperately needed settlement for social care. The vision needs to be long term and the system sustainable beyond the natural life span of the government that delivers it.

Accountability needs to be sharpened at local level and there needs to be better alignment between the different players – in health as well as social care.

People need to be made aware that individuals, by and large, have to pay for social care, and the public needs to be prepared for proposals – like the ill-fated dementia tax – that attempt to fund the system properly and also make it fairer for ‘self-funders’.

Above all, there needs to be a re-think about data collection and use. The existing data that are collected, mostly for monitoring purposes, are unhelpful when it comes to thinking about doing things differently, and there needs to be much more local, granular data available to reflect the more complex needs of changing and ageing populations.

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