3rd Jan 2025 13:45
(Alliance News) - The UK government on Friday launched the biggest reform in decades of Britain's ailing social care system, aiming to help thousands struggling to look after elderly, sick or disabled relatives.
Numerous past bids by different governments to shake up a system, which for years has been badly-underfunded and overwhelmed by rising demand, have failed.
But Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he was confident the long-term reforms will be a "triumph of hope over experience".
"We're trying to break that cycle of failure and build a new national consensus around social care, with cross-party talks starting next month," he told the Press Association.
Streeting, however, warned that the creation of a National Care Service – which he compared to the launch of the National Health Service in 1948 – would take time.
And he highlighted how the cost of caring for the nation's elderly was set to double in the next 20 years due to its ageing population.
A new independent commission will start work on the issue in April, chaired by Louise Casey, a member of parliament's upper House of Lords, but it is not due to publish its final report until 2028.
It will study how to provide better help for those with difficulties carrying out daily tasks such as washing, dressing or feeding themselves.
Currently only the most dependant people in the UK or those with the lowest incomes are eligible for some kind of public support, either via the NHS or local councils.
But the burden of care for many of those in the greatest difficulty falls on relatives, and has seen families having to pay out huge sums they can ill-afford and dipping into assets to afford private carers.
Streeting said he wanted "to see people protected from the catastrophic costs of upfront care that sees people forced to sell their homes and move out".
And writing in the Guardian, he said the reforms would "finally grasp this nettle and set our country on the path to building a national care service that meets the urgent need of our generation".
He also announced the release of an extra GBP86 million to help the elderly carry out improvements to their houses to allow them to remain living independently in their own homes.
An interim report will be published in mid-2026, but the final recommendations will not be ready until 2028.
That timeline triggered some criticism, on Friday, that it was too far away for a service that was already on its knees.
It "feels far too long" to wait, Sarah Woolnough, the chief executive of the King's Fund health think tank, told the BBC.
source: AFP
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