Labour's social care promise offers £350m to train care staff

The Labour party has announced it will spend £2.8 billion on home care support for 160,000 more people who get no care at all and has also pledged £350 million a year to train care staff.

Home care support for £160,000 more people

In a bid to win backing for the Labour party at the UK’s local elections in May, the party’s shadow social care minister Barbara Keeley MP said: “We are announcing £2.8 billion to increase the number of home care packages for vulnerable people and people with dementia.

"That should provide support for some 160,000 people. They are the people who are currently getting no care at all. So that’s why we’re making them a priority.”

50,000 home care packages for people with dementia

The party vows to increase the number of home care packages available (which can include support for people living at home to wash, dress and make meals) and promises to give no less than 50,000 home care packages to those who have dementia.

Labour’s announcement comes as new research from think tank The King's Fund has revealed around 20,000 fewer elderly people are getting support than three years ago, despite high demand for care.

Its latest report found 22 per cent of older people who need support currently do not get it.

Barbara Keeley told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, this morning: “We can’t have those vulnerable people living without care.”

With a quarter of care staff leaving the adult social care sector every year, she says care continuity and quality is currently at risk.

The Labour MP for Worsley and Eccles South said her party will give £350 million a year to train care staff “because needs are more and more complex and there isn’t a career path there. There isn’t anything that will keep people in care.”

£350 million per year to get people back into community

The Labour party social care reforms include £350 million per year to bring autistic people and people with learning disabilities back into the community from inpatient units, many of which the shadow minister described as "not appropriate places for them to be.”

The party’s social care reforms also include raising the earnings threshold for carers’ allowance year on year in line with the national living wage.

Government ‘abandoned every new proposal they came up with’

Referring to Labour's plan for a national care service (which the party pledged in its 2017 general election manifesto), she said today’s announcement deals with the Conservative government’s austerity cuts and the social care crisis.

“We’ve waited two years for a government green paper. As I say we have been through the process; had a green paper, a consultation, had a white paper back in 2010. We have our ideas."

The Labour MP accused the government of having no ideas for social care as "they’ve abandoned every new proposal they came up with including the one from 2017”.

Ms Keeley was referring to Theresa May’s infamous 2017 pledge to make people contribute more to their care costs from the value of their home – dubbed a ‘dementia tax’.

To fund its own social care reforms, Labour is reported to be proposing to introduce a tax rise for the wealthy that would apply to the top five per cent of earners – those earning £80,000 or more a year.

Charity campaigns for free personal care

The older people's charity Independent Age is campaigning for free personal care for all at the point of use. It argues free personal care would mean everyone who needs support with crucial tasks like getting in and out of bed, getting washed or dressed, would get help.

Free personal care is already in place in Scotland.

The charity states: "It is our belief that free personal care is the most effective option to address many of the ills of our current social care system, including catastrophic costs. We know that free personal care has the support of the public, of many national and local politicians, and urgently needs the support of our government."

To back Independent Age's free personal care campaign, you can sign the charity's letter calling on all local election candidates to support free personal care. To sign click here

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