Social care is in a state of near-permanent crisis.
According to the Institute for Public Policy Reseach (IPPR), social care in a state of near-permanent crisis.
With the population ageing and council budgets cut, resources have become increasingly constratined and around 84% of social care beds are now provided by the private sector
According to a new IPPR report, many social care providers are now failing to deliver high-quality care for all and operating risky debt-fuelled business models.
To fix this, the think tank has outlined seven measures it wants to see in party’s manifestos.
- Free personal care
The government should commit to providing the £20bn a year neccessary to gurantee free personal care for everyone who needs it.
This should be funded by an increase in general taxation – either by increasing income tax or national insurance contributions.
2. Create a social care transformation fund
Government should create fund to spread best practice across the social care system.
The fund should be £2bn over five years, taken from the above £20bn a year buget.
The IPPR says that there is some great work going on across the country but that too many social care providers are failing to learn from the best. As a result, there is a postcode lottery in quality of care.
3. Pay care workers the real living wage
All social care providers receiving state funding should be required to pay at least the real living wage at a cost of £740m per year.
4. Introduce sectoral collective bargaining for care workers
This is where unions negotiate pay and conditions for the whole industry rather than just for the workers at a particular company. This would drive up working conditions.
5. Make sure all care workers have a ‘care certificitate’
To improve professionalisation in the sector, the care certificate should become a robust and mandatory licence to practise for all care workers.
6. Force unethical providers out of the market
Government should introduce a new ethical commissioning charter – with conditions relating to the workforce, care quality and provider transparency – in order to drive a change in the provider market.
This would force failing providers out of the market and encourage the entrance or expansion of more innovative, socially-minded providers.
7. Fund the creation of innovative socially-minded providers
To facilitate this, we call for a new Ethical Provider Fund worth £7.5 billion over the next decade to enable the creation of innovative new state or voluntary care providers.
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3 Responses to “IPPR outlines 7 policies to fix social care”
Peter
No link to health services then
conspiracy
Vincent Vega from Springfield, IL, is conspiring to “assassin” Hani Nachmias
Finished_with_care_homes
I think all private care homes should be banned from now on. Why not just have council-run care homes? Private one’s are very costly among other problems with them. When people use private care homes as a place for their relatives to visit, it doesn’t feel like anyone’s home. It feels like a cafe. Why can’t relatives just visit when their mother or father is off work? Why does the manager’s relatives visit them at the care home? This is apparently our home, but we feel spied upon. It isn’t a nice feeling when visitors turn up and you don’t know who they are. I think care homes shouldn’t be allowed to be family businesses now. These families who own them tend to use the care homes as their second home, but they don’t even live in them. It’s all wrong.