Lynda Bellingham, Oxo mum, Strictly Come Dancing star and one ITV's Loose Women, is standing up for social care.
The actress grabbed the microphone back at the end of the National Children and Adult Service Conference session on the dementia strategy to tell the audience: "I want to start a campaign for all of you to make people appreciate all the work you do. I think you're wonderful."
Care service minister Phil Hope certainly put in the miles for this year's National Children and Adult Services Conference in Harrogate. On Wednesday he had planned to speak at a number of events. He managed to give an interview to Community Care and take part in a double act on the Adult Green Paper.
Ring-fencing remains the difficult question for social care. At the National Children and Adult Services Conference in Harrogate the thorny issue of the £150m funding for the dementia strategy - what some people describe as the "missing £150m". Care Services minister Phil Hope assured the audience that it was there in primary care trust budgets but that it wasn't ring-fenced because "PCTs and local government didn't want ring-fencing".
The DH wanted to create a debate around its Green Paper on the future of adult social care and debate it has created - just not the one it was hoping for.
At the National Children and Adult the Services Conference in Harrogate, the famed double act of care service minister Phil Hope and David Behan, director general for social care at the DH, presented an update in which Behan admitted at large proportion of the 15,000 responses to the Green Paper were about proposals concerning attendance allowance and disability living allowance.
National care charity Counsel and Care have responded to the government's refusal to raise the Personal Expenses Allowance to £40, as recommended by the Department of Work and Pensions Select Committee.
Looks like the Department of Health still doesn't know when it will publish its response to the consultation on reviewing No Secrets, the guidance on protecting vulnerable adults, despite the consultation process finishing on 31 January.
Didn't hear it myself but looks like Radio 5 examined the tensions between safeguarding vulnerable adults and the roll-out of personal budgets/direct payments in the Donal MacIntyre programme yesterday.
Interesting interview in The Herald with head of Scotland's care regulator, the Care Commission, Jacquie Roberts, in which she emphasises how how much adult care services will have to change to deal with the demographic changes of the coming decades, particularly in rolling back institutional care.
Adman Trevor Beattie's decision to fund the care of nine elderly women for a year rather than have them moved to separate homes is a wonderfully magnanimous gesture. It's the sort of tale that gets everybody worked up.In the light of last week's news about the successes of a trial giving addicts free heroin on the NHS in Maudsley, the reaction to today's news that the Scottish government is still planning on introducing a minimum price for alcohol seems rather bizarre.
The Adult Care blog looks behind the policies, practices and personalities involved in the care of older and disabled people for any hidden truths, helpful tips or humour. It is written by Community Care’s adults’ services beat editor Mithran Samuel. |
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