Yesterday’s announcement that reforms to the social care sector remain elusive lets down millions.
Commenting on the Queen’s speech, QCS’s Head of Care Quality, Philippa Shirtcliffe, said:
“To mark the State Opening of Parliament yesterday the Queen spoke for around nine minutes, but the government, who wrote her speech, reserved just nine words for social care. All we learned today was that proposals for social care would be “brought forward”.
For a sector with a history of funding, recruitment and retention challenges, this was not the message that hundreds of thousands of providers, and millions of service users, wanted to hear. They have been crying out for detail, clarity and reassurance for years now, but the government has offered them few crumbs of comfort.
Yesterday, it felt like the government was more concerned with the optics rather than providing the nation with a detailed policy summary of how it planned to repair the broken care system. Mr Johnson may be riding high in the polls right now, but he and his cabinet need to start ‘walking the walk’ instead of merely “talking the talk”.
This means not just promising to ensure that everyone “receives the dignity and security they deserve” but actually delivering on it. The government should start by outlining real policies and shouldn’t shy away from having an honest conversation with the public regarding the cost of fixing the social care system. That should be the minimum expectation and is the very least that millions of people deserve.”
