Keep your promise, Boris!

Certitude has signed up to the Care Support Alliance’s (CSA) campaign aimed at holding the Government to account to the Prime Minister’s promise on his first day in office to ‘fix social care once and for all’.

He said this over 100 weeks ago, in 2019, and there are still millions of people who need decent care and are not getting it. We were struck by the CSA’s recent discovery that since the start of the pandemic, over two million adults in England have had their requests for care turned down.

We believe, along with the CSA and the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group, which we are members of, that: ‘with social care reform, including investing more money and giving care workers the career structure, pay and conditions they deserve, we’d have the strong and effective care system our country needs. Millions of older people and disabled people would also be better able to live decently and independently, and millions of unpaid carers would be supported’.

A letter to the Chancellor

Today (1 October), as the Conservative Party’s annual conference begins, a joint letter from organisations who have signed up to the campaign has been sent to Chancellor Rishi Sunak, demanding that, in the next Spending Review on 27 October, he awards local authorities the decent funding that’s required to ‘stabilise, strengthen and ultimately improve social care in the UK’.

The joint letter states that the basic minimum requirement is an increase in annual funding of £3.9bn by 2023/24 to meet demographic changes and planned increases in the National Living Wage.  And this is just part of what must be addressed to improve the existing quality of care that councils are currently able to provide, and to maintain and increase access to support by those who need it, as the joint letter explains.

There is also a petition which anyone can sign – please sign it and spread the word!