ARC - Shaping the Future of Care Together

The Social Care Green Paper

The Green Paper on Adult Social Reform has finally been published. The document was launched on 14 July by Care Support Independence. This is a green paper so the government is asking for views, opinions and ideas on what they propose so that when they do reform adult social care it will approximate what we all want.

The main points laid out in the document is:

the proposal for a National Care Service where everyone gets the same basic care regardless of age. There are still some debates over whether this should be decided locally – but should allow people to move areas without the worry that their care provision will be wildly different.
To pay for this they are suggesting an insurance scheme, a partnership scheme or a comprehensive scheme.

Read the documents

The documents are available to download from the Department of Health website and the Care Support Independence website. There is also an option to register to receive updates on the Care Support Independence home page.

What’s in the Green Paper?

Read an article from Community Care on what was expected in the Green Paper.

In this article Community Care looks at public funding

This article also from Community Care looks at the main points in the document.

There were several different articles commenting on the Green Paper in The Guardian. This article looks at the National Care Service proposal.

This article looks at the three main proposals in the Social Care Paper in detail.

David Brindle comments on the lack of provision for accommodation in this article

And finally in this article is a series of quotes from important figures in the world of social care

The Department of Health’s Social Care Bulletin’s main focus at the end of July was the Green Paper. Download it here

The Green Paper on Adult Social Care was also reported on in the BBC
The Times and in the Financial Times

Major Concerns

There has been a lot of talk in the media on how the Green Paper focuses mostly on the elderly. The Learning Disability Coalition, of which ARC is a member, wrote a letter to The Guardian expressing concerns over lack of mention of people with a learning disability.

This article also discusses the lack of mention of learning disabilities in the green paper. Whilst concentrating on elderly people may be a priority for the government as our population ages, the fact is that care needs differ and the numbers of people with learning disabilities will increase over the next few years.