Care and Support System 'Unsustainable, unfair and too complex'
Leading UK voices from carers, disability rights, user groups and individuals have joined in partnership to call for radical changes for everyone touched by the care and support system, with the launch today of a new report.
Win-win: a new consensus on care and support criticises present care and support arrangements as “unsustainable, unfair and too complex, perpetuating dependency and inequality”.
It details recommendations for reform, including placing “individuals and families at the heart of decision making at every level, to take risks in designing new services alongside those who will be affected by them, and to see an end to practices that were not able to bring about transformation for the people who use them”.
The partners go on to call on the government to develop a better and fairer system which supports, not distorts, family relationships, so that all members of the family, whether they give or receive care, can access ordinary life chances.
The recommendations emerged from a roundtable event held in July 2009 which set out to explore and subsequently publicise shared positions on some of the key questions about care and support faced by families in the UK today.
Alex Fox, Director of Policy and Communications at The Princess Royal Trust for Carers, who led the drafting of the report says: “The participants came from a wide range of perspectives but they all agreed on the need for us to stop focusing on how the system can be better at what it does now.
"Instead we should look at our success in challenging the dependency that both people who give and those who receive care can experience. Nearly all of us will give or require care at some point in our lives. These experiences should not preclude us from pursuing paid employment, raising a family or being active citizens of our communities.”
Read the report and recommendations.
The recommendations in the report are endorsed by:
- Alzheimer’s Society
- Baroness Jane Campbell of Surbiton D.B.E
- Carers UK
- Counsel and Care
- Crossroads Care
- Institute of Public Policy Research (ippr)
- Mencap
- National Centre for Independent Living
- Jean Willson, family carer and National Family Carer Network
- National Voices
- The Plan Institute
- The Princess Royal Trust for Carers
- Radar
- Dame Phillippa Russell, Chair of the Standing Commission on Carers
- Peter Beresford, Professor of Social Policy, Brunel University and Chair Shaping our Lives
- Voluntary Organisations Disability Group
For more information, or interviews with a spokesperson, please contact:
Sarah Ross, PR Manager at The Princess Royal Trust for Carers on 0208 498 7920 / 07791 230 694/sross@carers.org.
Published: 21 October 2009