Draft Care and Support Bill puts "people at the centre of their own care"

The Draft Care and Support Bill consolidates many different laws, replacing more than a dozen pieces of legislation to create a single modern statute for adult care and support. It aims to reform adult social care, to try and prevent people reaching crisis point.

The Bill provides the legal framework for putting into action some of the main principles of the White Paper, ‘Caring for our future: reforming care and support’.

The Department of Health says the Bill aims to transform the social care system to focus on prevention and the needs and goals of people requiring care. It also includes a number of health measures, including the law needed to establish Health Education England and the Health Research Authority.

The Draft Care and Support Bill has three main parts. Part 1 (clauses 1 to 53) covers adult care and support, part 2 (clauses 54 to 77) covers health provisions and part 3 (clauses 78 to 83) covers general provisions.

Key elements of the Government’s plans include:

• People will be confident about the quality of care: ruling out crude “contracting by the minute” that turns care workers into clock watchers and consult on whether more should be done to prioritise continuity of care if a provider goes out of business.

• People will be treated with dignity and respect: more care workers will be trained and they will deliver high quality care. Dignity and respect will be at the heart of a new code of conduct and national minimum training standards will be set.

• Everyone will know what they are entitled to: access to care will be consistent through a national threshold for basic care and people will not have their care interrupted if they move around the country.

• Everyone will have control over their care: people will have clear, practical information and advice on the care system and a way to report bad care. People who receive state support will be in charge of their budget and have control of their care. To support people to live independently for as long as possible, we will inject £200m into the supported housing market over the next five years

• Carers will have new rights to public support: the draft Care and Support Bill will, for the first time ever, enshrine in law rights which place carers on the same footing as the people they care for. The Draft Care and Support Bill has been published alongside the White Paper, it is a fundamental reform of the legislation which underpins social care. People will be able to comment on the Draft Bill online, clause by clause, making it one of the most open and transparent pieces of draft legislation ever published.

Care Services Minister, Paul Burstow said: “People want a social care system that is fair, high quality and geared towards what people actually want. Our White Paper, draft Bill and progress report mark the most significant Government action in over 60 years to fix a system that is fragmented, confusing and massively variable in terms of quality and provision.

“We are reforming social care and will bring about lasting change to an overwhelmed and outdated system. Our plans will help to drive up standards of care for people, bring about a more joined up preventative approach to care, enabling people to live independently for longer.

“Most importantly however, it will put people at the centre of their own care and give them more information to make the right choices about their needs.”

Frances Patterson at the Law Commission said: “We are delighted that the government has responded so positively to the recommendations we made in our Adult Social Care report. If implemented, this Bill will clarify the legal framework that supports adult social care and bring beneficial changes to many.

“With the demographic changes occurring in society that is a significant step forward. The government has accepted our thinking that the individual should be at the heart of the new statute and that the guiding principle of care and support should be to promote the wellbeing of the individual and focus on their needs and aspirations rather than those of the local authority or service provider.

“The government has also accepted our reforms for carers, which will simplify the system for carers’ assessments and provision of services, as well as many of our other recommendations.”

For more information on The Draft Care and Support Bill, and to comment on it, visit: http://careandsupportbill.dh.gov.uk/home/

For an in-depth analysis of the White Paper, see Richard Howard’s article:www.carehome.co.uk/news/article.cfm/id/1557488/assessing-the-care-and-support-white-paper-is-care-reform-being-thwarted-by-the-treasury

Image: Care Services Minister, Paul Burstow; courtesy of Liberal Democrats' photostream