Defining the future care strategy

Last week saw the release of the University of Warwick’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation report, which sought to detail some of the realities the UK faces in dealing with the care needs of an ageing population, through looking at key areas like workforce development, the dignity and independence of the elderly and the financial support that will be available to carers.

The study supported a number of overriding concerns, including: enhancing the personal skills of carers in order to achieve a versatility of care that prevents excessive relocation and bracketing of personal needs, as the best way of achieving the ‘home for life’ goal of many healthcare campaigners; the forming of strong community bonds in relation to health services; a more strategic approach to the financing of care, to account for the likely scenario of a lack of Government funding; and the clarification of nursing roles in order to make for a more accountable system.

Such studies are widely welcomed throughout the care industry, which grows increasingly anxious that soon there will be too many people with care needs for the sector to cope with, but in this instance the study is also timely in that it emerged a few days after the coalition Government’s independent review into the financing of elderly care was announced. Should the decisive way forward both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are promising materialise, then it would appear that care experts and campaigners have less than 12 months in which to stress to those in power the more crucial aspects that any care revolution might need.

One hope is that one-solution pre-election soundbites – like those of a National Care Service and inheritance tax levies – turn out to be a product of that climate and that more detailed studies, like those of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report and those carried out by key charities like Age UK and the Alzheimer’s Society, are taken more fully into account when the proposals of the Government review are outlined. It seems clear that the complex issues faced in ensuring the dignity of an ageing populace point towards flexibility, and therefore the management of, the system as being essential, rather than any solutions that are one-track or dictatorial in their aims.

This week Paul Burstow, the new Care Services Minister, supported the need for versatility throughout the review’s remit, surprisingly, for some, even refusing to rule out the option of a ‘death tax’ that had caused much criticism in the run up to the election when the media learned that Labour were considering it as a viable option. Though Mr Burstow did criticise the failure of the previous Government to address to elderly care problem after it was included in one of Tony Blair’s key prime ministerial speeches of 1997, and announced his aim to turn the findings of the review into legislation ‘by the autumn of 2011’. The care industry will be keeping its fingers crossed that a real sense of direction will be the result.

The full Joseph Rowntree Foundation report can be viewed at the following link: http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/care-workforce-development