by Peter BeresfordThe political party conference season is almost upon us. Worryingly, this year it comes within the time frame of the public consultation over the future funding of social care. This is a contentious enough issue at the best of times. Social care has long been starved of adequate funding. As a result tighter and tighter means and needs tests have come to apply.
While a few people have been getting better, more flexible packages of support, many more are being denied the support that they need and far too many service users, particularly older people, are still ending up in institutional settings - despite all the evidence that these make it difficult to retain choice and control. Now with the credit crunch and predictions all round of greatly restricted public expenditure, the prospects for social care seem even more worrying.
Where is the balanced debate?
If ever there were a time when we needed balanced, well informed discussion about social care funding, then it is now. But already government has shown its reluctance to commit itself to this. While many of the people it consulted with in the run up to the Green Paper said they thought it should be paid for out of general taxation, like the NHS - and the authors of the Green Paper themselves concluded that this was probably the simplest and fairest approach to funding - this option is explicitly 'ruled out' in the published document. Such an exclusion hardly seems likely to encourage the wide and open public debate on the future of social care which government says it wants to foster.
What the government seems to be going for instead is some kind of 'partnership' funding arrangement which is likely to put more financial responsibility on the individual service user and increase the market opportunities for private insurance companies. There is a big irony here - as the US President Barack Obama seeks to stem the inefficiency and greed of US health insurance companies, here in the UK, we look like turning to just such companies to meet growing social care needs.
Opportunities for lobbying
Which brings us back to the party conference season. In recent years, across the major political parties these have become opportunities for lobbying and love fests between the private and state sectors at innumerable fringe and other meetings. This week Private Eye, reports one such event. It says:
Doubtless there will be equivalent meetings at the Liberal Democratic and Labour Party conferences. But where will the voice of older people and other social care service users be in this debate? And how will they match the big guns of the private sector organisations who can afford to wine, dine and set up their own high power discussions with government and shadow ministers? This bodes badly for the government's green paper consultation, democracy and the future of social care. We will all of us have our work cut out trying to balance the scales of social justice here.
Key words:
Where is the balanced debate?
If ever there were a time when we needed balanced, well informed discussion about social care funding, then it is now. But already government has shown its reluctance to commit itself to this. While many of the people it consulted with in the run up to the Green Paper said they thought it should be paid for out of general taxation, like the NHS - and the authors of the Green Paper themselves concluded that this was probably the simplest and fairest approach to funding - this option is explicitly 'ruled out' in the published document. Such an exclusion hardly seems likely to encourage the wide and open public debate on the future of social care which government says it wants to foster.
What the government seems to be going for instead is some kind of 'partnership' funding arrangement which is likely to put more financial responsibility on the individual service user and increase the market opportunities for private insurance companies. There is a big irony here - as the US President Barack Obama seeks to stem the inefficiency and greed of US health insurance companies, here in the UK, we look like turning to just such companies to meet growing social care needs.
Opportunities for lobbying
Which brings us back to the party conference season. In recent years, across the major political parties these have become opportunities for lobbying and love fests between the private and state sectors at innumerable fringe and other meetings. This week Private Eye, reports one such event. It says:
Shadow health minister Stephen O'Brien will be discussing whether funding for long-term care should be by 'individual, state or partnership'. The answer may well be by 'partnership' because the meeting is being paid for by Partnerships Assurance which specialises in funding elderly care through equity release and insurance schemes and so has a direct interest in less government funding for elderly care (Private Eye, No 1244, 4-17 September, p8).
Doubtless there will be equivalent meetings at the Liberal Democratic and Labour Party conferences. But where will the voice of older people and other social care service users be in this debate? And how will they match the big guns of the private sector organisations who can afford to wine, dine and set up their own high power discussions with government and shadow ministers? This bodes badly for the government's green paper consultation, democracy and the future of social care. We will all of us have our work cut out trying to balance the scales of social justice here.
Key words:
Peter Beresford writes: "The party conference season is almost upon us" [my emphasis]. Has he never heard of the Green Party?
For news of what went on at Green Party conference at the end of last week (including emergency motions concerning welfare reform and the CRB's plans to get CRB Enhanced Clearance applicants to register on the ID cards database), go to the Green Party website.
Alan Wheatley
Green Party of England & Wales Disability Spokesperson
Thanks for this Alan, As I already wrote you, yes of course I have heard of the Green Party, unfortunately so far the public have not taken it seriously as a political force at general elections.
As I mentioned, it would be very good if as well as offering a timely advert for the Greens, you could tell us what your plans are for social care funding and how you will ensure that service users have real entitlements, adequate funding and a real chance to live independently. peter
I reply here belatedly to Peter's comment and related e-mail message. (It appears that my interpersonal e-mail reply to Peter was after the above post was posted.
(At the time Peter e-mailed me, I was in a state of mental meltdown that I am still recovering from regarding 'communications' from JobCentre Plus [JCP] regarding my Employment & Support Allowance [ESA] entitlement. A letter dated 13 August said that "from 12 July [I] will be getting Employment & Support Allowance at £64.30 a week," whereas a report dated 28 August and not received until the afternoon of 8 September said that the 12 July decision to deny me ESA has been upheld. JCP are currently holding on to weeks of ESA payments owed to me, pending their receipt of a sick note that was sent over a week ago.)
I will be among a group of Green Party members who will be convening later this month to discuss a Green Party response to the Adult Care Green Paper. Much of the welfare reform debate is relevant to the adult care funding debate; it seems that -- along the lines of Peter's argument that the private sector is pulling the strings -- New Labour and the Tories are looking to make cuts at the expense of the economically most vulnerable. A major point to bear in mind is that Green Party policies revolve around sustainability.
We consider investment in 'green collar' jobs such as creation of new social housing, improving home insulation and development of sustainable energy projects to be more life-affirming and environmentally friendly than sentencing people on out-of-paid-work benefits to apply for jobs that either do not exist or are so low-paid that they undermine social justice and crush the human spirit. As a JSA claimant and working-life long volunteer sentenced to attend New Deal at A4e Holloway in 2008, I was labelled a 'beneficiary' and told, "The more jobs you apply for, the better your chances. Ten job applications per day is good." (I would argue that ten job applications per day is a waste of global resources as well as personal wellbeing.)
In October 2008 I co-wrote 'Writing off workfare: for a Green New Deal, not the flexible New Deal'. That was sent out through Green Party Press Office as the Green Party response to the Welfare Reform Green Paper, and Community Care magazine's Senior Reporter Daniel Lombard was among the mailing list. He did not regard it as being as worthwhile as the British Library has in its Welfare Reform on the Web portal. Much in our economy and welfare reform proposals traditionally revolves around a basic income known as 'Citizens Income' that would be available to all citizens, be non-means-tested and lack the 'conditionality' of Carers Allowance, Attendance Allowance, Jobseekers Allowance, Employment & Support Allowance and Incapacity Benefit. That would, in principle, help encourage economic participation for all; but admittedly Citizens Income (CI) policy needs to be 'fleshed out more' in terms of levels.
In principle, CI would give citizens greater liberty to devote time to parenting, carer responsibilities, volunteering, lifelong learning, etc than means-tested benefits and the market economy allow. In terms of our next General Election policy, it would most likely be rolled out initially to pensioners and carers.
One issue that I personally would raise in the proposed working group within the Green Party is that the split between children's and adult's social services that New Labour introduced does not encourage investment in individuals' lifelong development toward greater autonomy. That split smacks of short-termist government targets. In the transition between children's and adult's services, the person is likely to get lost as well as their records. We need greater access to proper diagnostic and rehabilitation facilities for people with disabilities throughout life.
Because of woeful NHS and council disregard for Speech & Language Therapy as a priority, for example, individuals whose entitlement to SLT is cut off at 12 years, say, become more dependent on others and are denied educational and work-related opportunities because they are deemed to 'require too much supervision'. At the same time, they are 'denied a voice' metaphorically and newly qualified SLT graduates cannot get paid work as SLTs.
Social care and education also intertwine. People with learning difficulties, learning disabilities and mental health issues also need greater access to basic skills tuition that is oriented more to personal growth than to the market economy. My decades of survival on out-of-paid work benefits confirms the Green Party ethos that education is not just about equipping people 'for the workplace'. Creative self expression can help people find ways of channelling their rage constructively rather than press 'self-destruct' buttons. I have seen a native-English speaking man aged 60+ blossom in self-confidence and motivation to get his Level 1 in English Literacy through joining in in a drama group and also reading poetry. When pressured to do tasks that were too stressful, however, he would have panic attacks and turn to booze.
As Green Party Disability Spokesperson and a largely self-educated person, I reframe painful experience into 'expert witness' theoretical sensitivity, etc. By contrast New Labour's 'meritocracy' mythologises its own existence while it sets out top-down targets that are unjust and inappropriate to the wellbeing of society's most economically vulnerable. Implementing such targets leads to bureaucrats and Atos Medical Services [sic] staff, etc mimicking the particpants in Milgrams' Experiment. The Tories brought in the system of remote call-centre delivery to benefits and taxation services, and New Labour now uses the call-centre mechanism to help ensure that "Those who give the order seldom see the mess it makes."
We would also increase taxation on higher earners.
I shall close with reference to a few major cost-cutting measures that are very much in line with established Green Party policy. The Green Party calls for pulling British troops out of Afghanistan immediately, not in 30 or 40 years time! We would also roll-back the creeping surveillance society, and cancel Public Finance Initiative deals that are like buying a house on a credit card.