Tories omit home care and social work from manifesto

The Conservative Party manifesto has been unveiled today containing not one reference to social work and no detail on the party’s long-awaited plan to fund home care.

For months, the Tories have been planning a domiciliary care plan to accompany its voluntary insurance scheme for residential care, under which people would be able to pay £8,000 and have any care home fees waived for life.

However, the manifesto said only that the party would “work to design a system where people can top up their premium – also voluntarily – to cover the costs of receiving care in their own home”.

The Tories reiterated their stance against Labour’s plan to introduce a compulsory levy on all adults to fund care, on the basis that it would penalise family carers.

It said it would support carers with direct payments and improved access to short breaks and introduce a new per-patient funding system for all palliative care providers so people were treated in the place of their choice.

It also reiterated plans to provide people with chronic conditions access to a single health and social care budget, which they can control. This would mean a rollout of personal health budgets, which are now being piloted, and a removal of restrictions on individuals combining health and social care funding.

Unlike Labour’s manifesto, the Tory document contained no reference to how the party would reform social work training and practice, nor was there any reference to dementia care.

The Conservatives also restated plans to scrap Labour’s existing employment support programmes and amalgamate these into a single work programme for everyone who is unemployed.

Like Labour, the party would reassess all current claimants of incapacity benefit, moving those found fit to work on to jobseeker’s allowance, which is worth £25 a week less than incapacity benefit.

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