Despite promises, social care is worse than ever | Letters

Letters: As a mother with disabled children, Anne-Louise Crocker has experienced first-hand how the social care system lets people down. Plus a letter from Dr Brian Fisher

At the 2024 Labour conference, Wes Streeting said: “We can’t fix the NHS without fixing the crisis in social care. And we can’t fix social care without the people who work in it … I will deliver a new deal for care professionals: a fair pay agreement, to improve pay and conditions and give staff the status and respect they deserve – our first step towards building a national care service.”

In fact, Streeting’s first step on social care was to set up yet another review, which will not report until the end of the parliament, thus kicking social care down the road, like every other health secretary before him.

I am a full-time, unpaid carer to my two adult disabled daughters. Two years on, I can report that the state of social care is worse than ever. Despite having a budget from our local authority (formally Tory, now Reform UK) to pay for care, I cannot get anyone to do it. For the first time in 20 years I have nobody to help me. The recent king’s speech introduced 37 new bills, without a single mention of social care. So much for the “new deal for care professionals”. They have become an endangered species, and the situation is exacerbated by the Labour government’s ban on visas for social care workers.

In his resignation letter, Streeting said: “Where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction we have drift.” It is possibly the only true thing he has said since becoming a minister, and nowhere has it been more true than in the Department of Health and Social Care.
Anne-Louise Crocker
Shoreham, Kent

• I was pleased to see Heather Stewart’s article on social care (Whatever happens with the leadership, Labour must tackle the issue of social care head-on, 17 May). The current provision fails us all, care workers, unpaid carers and those who draw on care. A toxic mix of austerity and private equity drain the system of funding and leave workers struggling to keep relational care alive.

We need a transformed social care, free at the point of use, like the NHS, and funded from taxation, like the NHS. But this time free of private profiteering. We need services to respond to people’s needs, not the other way round. It would make a big difference if the Care Act was acted on in full. Scotland offers free personal care – it can be done.

Funding social care is an investment with a return of 1.75 times the initial funding. And, beyond economics, it would be hugely popular and the sort of big idea that Labour needs. Let’s make it happen!
Dr Brian Fisher
End Social Care Disgrace

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