Brown's speech acknowledges the 'over five million people doing amazing work as carers'

Over five million people doing amazing work as carers - The Princess Royal Trust for Carers welcomes Brown’s tribute

Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour Party conference today acknowledged the role of carers in our society. With the Labour party claiming to be the “party of the family” and “striving for fairness”, The Trust will watch with interest to see how the government turns Mr Brown’s pledge to enable “older people to stay in their homes longer” into reality. This cannot be delivered by financial help alone, but will require more care from ordinary families.

In his speech, Mr Brown said that he believed “better social care is worth fighting for”. The Trust welcomes his plans for the NHS to be more personal to peoples needs and the Trust will be calling on the government to make sure that their plans consider the impact on carers too.

In these tough economic times The Trust welcomes any moves to improve the financial circumstances of those who have long term medical conditions and the carers who help look after them. As the carers allowance is woefully inadequate we believe the long-term plans for abolishing prescriptions charges should go some small way to helping improve families' finances.