Social Care is Failing..

... this is according to some Age UK research which has just been published and reported in the Guardian today.

This isn't news to me and probably isn't news to any of you either. It's painfully obvious to anyone who has been involved with the sector in recent years that things need to change.

In fact my, and I'm sure other peoples main opposition to Individual budgets, was that for all the positives around the policy it never dealt with the core issue which was lack of funds - which as the article points too is really the key issue.

It seems that on this issue (and not dissimilar to university funding) there have so far only been sticking plaster soloutions; Politicians ducking out of the big debates. These debates are chiefly who pays and how? It seems that paying for anything from general taxation is out of vogue so we have what I call the 'making a contribution' society - that is responsibility for social risks (i.e poor health; unemployment etc) being increasingly placed on inividuals.

Some time ago a kind of insurance model was mooted for social care this it seems has dissapeared from the agenda, but as the Age UK research shows things need to be addressed sooner rather than later.