The Government has responded to the Alliance’s call to publish a consultation on social care in early 2018.
Co-Chairs of the Care and Support Alliance – Caroline Abrahams (Charity Director at Age UK) and Mark Lever (Chief Executive at the National Autistic Society) said:
“We welcome the Government’s response to our petition that received the support of nearly 20,000 people in two weeks. This called for the Government to set out proposals on how to fix our social care system that currently means more than a million people do not get the basic care they need.
“We are pleased that the scope of the paper is wider than funding and that many individuals and organisations will be given the opportunity to feed into the consultation.However, we remain concerned that while there are separate work streams to look at the needs of working aged disabled adults and carers, it appears that their needs are not being given the same weight. We will work to ensure their voices are included in the consultation.
“Also, as the Green Paper won’t now be published until Summer 2018, we are not going to see reform until 2020 at the earliest. But it is estimated that there will be a £2.5 billion funding gap by 2019/20 which needs to be tackled while the consultation happens.
“The Government needs to plug the gap in social care funding while working on reforms that look at the whole social care system and address the needs of working age disabled adults, older people and their carers.”