According to the Labour Party website the Labour Party have achieved the following in their time in power:
Why Labour?
As people live longer and healthcare improves, demand for social care is set to rise over the coming decades. Labour will respond to these demographic changes, taking the right long-term decisions to secure a fair balance of funding between the taxpayer and the individual, and a person-centred service for everyone with long-term needs and their carers. Creating a new care system is a top Labour government priority. We want to give people more control over services and enhance their dignity and quality of life. To do this we are giving more personal budgets to the people who use care services, putting them in control of their own care.
Key achievements:
* Labour introduced the right to request flexible working for parents of disabled children, and has extended this to cover carers of adults.
* Labour’s New Deal for Carers provides support and services for carers, and we support carers financially through the Carers Allowance.
* Labour has launched its Dignity in Care campaign, putting dignity and respect at the heart of care for older people and people with mental health problems, and investing £67 million to improve care homes for older people. Over 4,000 people have already signed up as Dignity Champions.
* Labour has introduced tough new safeguarding laws, to make sure that people who present a risk of harm are barred from working with children and vulnerable adults.
* Labour has legislated to protect people who may be unable to make decisions for themselves, through the Mental Capacity Act.
* Labour has given new rights to disabled people through the Disability Discrimination Act, and has signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
New Labour, your Britain:
* Labour has launched the first national Dementia Strategy, to transform care for people with dementia with the appointment of dementia advisers, better training for GP’s and the establishment of memory services staffed by specialists to provide early diagnosis and treatment.
* Labour will transform social care over the next three years, making the funding system fairer and giving more people their own personal budgets to choose the support services they want for themselves or their family members.
* Labour has made families with disabled children a priority, with a total of £770 million in new funding for local authorities and primary care trusts to support disabled children and their families, to transform short break services, and to improve disabled children’s services and children’s palliative care.
* Labour’s Carers Strategy included plans for a significant increase in funding for short breaks for carers of adults.
* Labour is investing £80 million in Extra Care Housing, to avoid forcing older couples apart when one of them needs to enter residential care, allowing them a home of their own with care and support services on site.
* Labour is launching a targeted package of extra support for charities providing debt advice, mental health and family support services in the most deprived areas of England, plus millions extra to help those out of work start volunteering.
* Labour is introducing annual health checks for adults with learning disabilities, who are likely to have greater health needs than the general population.
Labour Party Social Care Policy :http://www.labour.org.uk/social-care
I would be interested to hear both positive and negative views on Labour’s Social Care policies in the comments below?
£1.52 an hour carers allowance is not a fair “replacement income” for someone who cannot work!
I always find it surprising that the Labour do not celebrate the success of the Valuing People Document 2001 that ensured the rights, inclusion, choice and indpendence of people with learning disabilities.
I note from the text above Labour is to ” support carers financially through the Carers Allowance”.
To be eligible for CA, a carer must care for someone at least 35 hours a week, for this the carer receives the paltry sum of £61.35.
On October 1st, 2014, the National Minimum wage rises to £6.50 an hour, after just 9.5 hours work and probably doing something a lot less strenuous or stressful, the “worker” has earned more than the carer gets for the whole 35 hours. The caring role for many carers is in excess of 100 hours per week, but the maximum allowance is only £61.35.
To be fair Carers Allowance should be on a par with the National Minimum wage, after all many carers have given up paid work, to dedicate themselves to the care and welfare of someone with physical and/or mental disabilities. It should also continue to be paid, after the carer reaches retirement age, because he or she doesn`t just “down tools” upon reaching 65, the caring role continues, so why does the Allowance stop ?
Will Labour increase Carers Allowance to a level on a par with the Minimum Wage and continue to pay Carers Allowance, after the carer reaches retirement age ?
Labours New Deal for Carers