As part of my speech at the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services Spring Conference, I am today calling for social care to be treated as part of Britain’s infrastructure, treating it the same way we would the roads and railways. If you neglect your country’s physical infrastructure, you get roads full of potholes, and buckling bridges. The same is true if you fail to invest in social infrastructure like care.
We need a ten-year plan of investment and reform to transform the lives of older and disabled people, as part of our plans to make Britain the best country in which to grow old. Our aim isn’t just to fix the crisis in social care, as the Prime Minister has called for. It is to transform support for all those who need social care, and enable older and disabled people to live the life they want to choose.
Under Labour’s plans for social care, we will:
- Take a ‘home-first’ approach, increasing the use of early help and technology to ensure people can live in their own home for as long as possible.
- Empower care users and their families by giving them greater say and control on services.
- Deliver a new deal for frontline care workers, to transform pay, training and working conditions.
- Build partnerships with families, where Government backs unpaid carers to look after their loved ones
- Join up health and social care services, to deliver a ‘one person, one team, one system’ approach.
Read more on LabourList, and in the Telegraph.
You can read my full speech on Labour’s website.
