Liberal Democrats announce respite care funding policy

2010-03-15 11:44:56

The Liberal Democrats have unveiled their own plans for using the money set aside for funding the Personal Care at Home Bill. Party leader Nick Clegg announced that they would use the money to pay for respite care for Britain’s ‘hidden army of heroes’ – the five million unpaid carers that save the economy £87 billion every year. Any carer working for more than 50 hours per week, estimated at around one million people, would receive a week’s break every year. The scheme would operate by allocating carers a personal budget which they could use to pay for a week’s holiday, or just have time to themselves at home, whilst knowing that their relatives are receiving proper care in their absence. Addressing the King’s Fund in a speech on 22 February, Mr Clegg described the proposal as a just reward for ‘...some of the most dedicated, hardworking and undervalued’ people in the UK. The new initiative would complement the Carer’s Credit, a new benefit that will be launched in April and will help around 4.7 million carers who work 20 or more hours a week to increase their state pension funds. Carers’ charities have expressed their approval that the Liberal Democrats have chosen to focus on carers when allocating social care funding. However, Imelda Redmond of Carers UK added that ‘We do not want this to be at the expense of the improvements that would be delivered through the Personal Care at Home Bill.’ In his speech, Mr Clegg also called for the government to set up an independent cross-party commission to decide on the future of the UK’s social care system and its funding, commenting that ‘None of the political parties have got a fully-rounded, fully worked-out solution to this huge demographic problem.’