Community Care Market News : News Stream Article.

News Stream Article

Don't let the Green Paper land in the long grass
Community Care Market News - A plea has been made from an alliance of over 30 care charities to the government, insisting that the Green Paper does not fall back and miss out on a pre-summer recess publication.

Care sector bodies are concerned that yet another week has gone by with no sign of when the Green Paper on adult social care is likely to arrive.

When first promised by the government the paper was expected to see the light of day early in 2009. By the time that the chancellor published his last Budget, this had been put back to June. Most recently, comments made in parliament by the new health secretary Andy Burnham suggested that early July would see the paper arrive.

Speculation on such topics as a social insurance programme which could see people asked to pay around £12,000 each to cover the costs of their care, has ruffled many feathers among the public and it is now feared that the governemnt is attempted to delay the release even further while it hammers out yet more proposals to include in the long awaited consultation.

The Guardian this week suggested that Green Paper may not surface before the parliamentary recess on 21 July, which would put back any further word to October at the earliest.

Commenting on the lack of word from the Department of Health (DH), the head of Carers UK Imelda Redmond spoke on behalf of a the Care and Support Alliiance to stress just how crucial it is that the momentum built in recent months to discuss the problem of care funding does not go to waste.

Ms Redmond said: 'In the current economic climate, there is a very real risk that these issues will be lost, postponed or judged too costly to confront. This would simply not be acceptable. Reform of social care must be a political priority now, at the next election and beyond.'

Other charities in the Care and Support Alliiance include Mencap, Rethink, Scope and the Alzheimer's Society. They are joined by the think-tank groups the King's Fund and the Resolution Foundation.

Justin Merritt (10/07/2009)

Contact Justin Merritt on
justin@laingbuisson.co.uk
Tel: 020 7841 0049