Care homes will continue to go under as workers leave the sector for better paid jobs
After all this time, is that it? The white paper on social care in England, published on Wednesday, doesn’t begin “to fix social care once and for all”, as Boris Johnson promised on Downing Street’s steps. Ignoring the scale of this crisis, nothing was announced that will actually slow the galloping rate of the sector’s collapse, with half of councils having dealt with a care home closure or bankruptcy in the past six months.
Only a fifth of funds, £1.7bn, raised from the new national insurance levy goes where it’s most needed, including retaining a vanishing social care workforce, which is already 100,000 short. Instead, the bulk of the £5.4bn will go on preserving the inheritances of well-off homeowners. Wednesday’s announcement, which does not come with extra money, reallocates some to new technology for collecting data, assessing risks to help prevent patient falls and for adapted housing for the frail. But in this hurricane, good ideas risk sinking under water.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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