In the week that it emerged that there could be up to 700,000 young carers looking after their parents and close relatives, five of them met David Cameron to explain the difficulties they faced. Solutions were rather more elusive.
Discontent continues in David Cameron's favourite borough, Hammersmith and Fulham, in west London.
Carers Week ended just a few days ago and, with supreme timing, Hammersmith and Fulham Council in west London - reputed to be David Cameron's favourite borough - has decided to end funding its carers' centre. Its only carers' centre.
Social workers looking forward to a whopping 1% pay rise in each of the next two years must be apoplectic as they listen to our irresponsible, gung-ho bankers threatening to quit the UK because their ill-gotten bonuses above £25,000 will be taxed at 50%.
Radio 4's Today programme has been examining care for the elderly and this week carried a worrying report about the lot of a care assistant.
The government's New Deal for Carers is worth £255m. Which seems a generous allocation of funds until one tots up the estimated savings to the UK economy made by the very existence of unpaid carers: £87bn.
It's Carers Week and the timing may have a certain resonance for D-day veteran Bert Bowden.
| Outside Left questions the thinking behind today’s social policy, with a sometimes wry, occasionally cynical, always straight-talking look at the political elite that shapes it, written by sub editor, Mike McNabb. |
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