News round up: elderly care costs, vetting scheme, budget cuts

Iain Duncan Smith warns of elderly care costs for public finances

Iain Duncan Smith will warn today that the cost of care for the elderly has placed a “demographic timebomb” beneath Britain’s public finances.

The former Tory leader will warn that the poorest pensioners are likely to bear the brunt of a failure to tackle the issue. The extension of so-called “granny mortgages” that allow the elderly to release equity in their homes more easily is among proposals to be examined.

Read more on this story in The Times

McKellen speaks out against vetting scheme

The actor Sir Ian McKellen has become the latest high-profile artist to speak out against the Government’s vetting scheme for all adults working with children.

He said that if he had not been able to perform as a child alongside adults in small voluntary theatres, “the 15-year-old Ian McKellen would be absolutely miserable and wouldn’t have grown up to be this person today”.

Read more on this story in The Independent

Call for social care reform as costs escalate

Radical reform of social care is needed both to contain costs and improve the quality of a system that is “fundamentally broken”, say leading academics.

Rather than extra spending being seen as “dead money” or a “necessary evil”, social care expenditure should be seen as “a form of social and economic investment”, according to the study commissioned by Downing Street and the health department.

Read more on this story in The Financial Times

Union: 3000 jobs will go with cuts from council budgets

More than 3000 jobs will be axed and £300million cut from council budgets [in Scotland], a union warned yesterday.

Public service union Unison said council education and social work departments would be hardest hit.

Read more on this story in The Daily Record

More from Community Care

Comments are closed.