Patients Association - New coalition calls for social care settlement

12 Mar 2019 09:35 AM

A new coalition of 15 health organisations representing the breadth of the NHS have joined forces to make the case for a sustainable, long-term settlement for social care.

The Patients Association is a member of the coalition, called Health for Care, which was launched last week with an open letter to the Prime Minister informing her that social care is “on the brink of collapse”, and that more than one million older people are being denied help with basic tasks.

At the heart of the coalition is the desire for a sustainable solution to how we pay for and provide care and support to people in England. Despite the importance of social care in enabling people’s independence and dignity, successive governments have failed to adequately support the sector.  There are around 1.4 million older people who are not able to access the support they need. As things stand it is inevitable that this number will rise. 

There are 850,000 people with dementia in the UK, that figure will increase to more than 1 million by 2025. Up to 58 per cent of people over 60 are living with at least one long-term condition, and the numbers of people with multiple conditions is rising by eight per cent each year.

The Health for Care coalition is concerned with supporting an ageing population with increasingly complex needs.

The coalition has developed a set of principles upon which it believes a sustainable social care system should be based.

The Patients Association supports these principles, and we hope they will be a useful contribution to the debate ahead of the forthcoming publication of the adult social care Green Paper.

You can find out more about the Health for Care coalition here.