Social Care

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness put it beautifully in saying that the people we are talking about, who are on the receiving end of care, need to be treated with dignity and honour. I wholeheartedly agree with her.

I will separate integrated care into older people and working-age adults, as the noble Baroness did. On older people—and on health and care in general—I encourage her again to look at the five-year forward view and the plan for integration. In the recent Budget, we funded more than £200 million of capital programmes to help move a handful of local areas to what are called accountable care systems. That is where you look at the health of a population, which is quite an important step forward towards integrated care. I agree with her that that is not necessarily the everyday experience.

On disabled working-age adults, we may talk about the ageing and growing population but I believe that they are the fastest-growing group of care users. There is of course excellent work going on at the local authority level; I had the privilege many years ago to chair a special school in Wandsworth and saw the fantastic work it did with a peripatetic autism service there. But I know that there is huge variation, which is why the parallel programme of work that I talked about is so important.

Finally, the noble Baroness talked about hard-to-reach communities, and I could not agree more on that. One of the ways of reaching them is to engage with those who give voice to those communities. I would be delighted to discuss that with her, to make sure that we are listening to every voice we can as we move ahead.

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, way back in the early 1980s when I was working as a community doctor, I was also chair of social services in my borough. The main topic of conversation and angst then was how to combine health and social care budgets so that patients could receive proper care. How many more decades do we have to wait for this country to get its act together and do something about it? Other countries in Europe have good social care; why cannot we?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

First, I think we do have good social care in this country. That was the CQC’s finding, and it is important for us to recognise that we are building from a position of strength. Secondly, I agree with the noble Baroness on her point about integration. It has taken too long and that is what we are all focused on doing. I hope that she will join in this process so that we can build a true consensus as we move ahead.