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Reflections on the health and social care funding announcement

8 September 2021 · Categories: Communities Care, Opinions and responses, People Can

Along with most of the country, we sat in anticipation for the long-awaited announcement of health and social care funding yesterday. As expected, the Government has declared an intention to raise taxes to fund the pressures in health and social care. However, it was disappointing that the debate focused on using a large proportion of the funding to plug short term pressures in the NHS created by the pandemic and from a care and support perspective it focused heavily on bed-based care and the cost of this care to individuals.

On a more positive note, the debate in recent weeks has raised the profile of social care and there has been some recognition that more needs to be done to solve the pressures in the care sector.

…making sure that caring is a properly respected profession in its own right.

Prime Minister

We all hoped the statement would have gone further and it is a great shame that the opportunity wasn’t taken to announce more radical change that would have a greater impact on people’s lives. Headlines however are often not the whole picture and we remain hopeful that the vision for social care is more far reaching than that outlined in the Commons yesterday.

While we wait to see more detail over the coming months and the long-awaited white paper, we will continue to work with partners to lobby for more widespread, innovative and ambitious change and we will carry on with our day job – bringing more choice to people who need a bit of support to lives the lives they want.

We will keep supporting amazing community enterprise and community business leaders up and down the country, adding capacity to the sector and helping other local people. Our colleagues across the Local Area Coordination Network will remain alongside people and communities to nurture and help unlock strengths so people can move towards their vision of a good life…and they’ll support the system to rebalance post-pandemic. We will also seek to actively amplify the voices of those who draw on social care through our projects like Valuable and Vulnerable which shone a light on those who were shielding through the pandemic and our work with Borough Care, ensuring residents and their families have a direct input into how services are designed and run.

And in the wider sector we will support more innovations like those from Tribe, Keyring, Buurtzorg Britain and Ireland and Grapevine…and all the others featured in the TLAP innovations directory…And we’ll continue championing the Social Care Future vision:

We all want to live in the place we call home with the people and things that we love, in communities where we look out for one another, doing the things that matter to us

Social Care Future vision

So, while the announcement may not tick all our boxes, we look forward to working together across health and social care to make a positive change and staying true to our aim of unlocking potential and effecting change.

By Pip Cannons – CEO of Community Catalysts


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