Elderly need better quality care

2 Oct 03
A member of the original Royal Commission on long-term care has said that the drive to raise care standards for the elderly should take precedence over efforts to secure total state funding.

03 October 2003

A member of the original Royal Commission on long-term care has said that the drive to raise care standards for the elderly should take precedence over efforts to secure total state funding.

Joel Joffe was one of two commissioners who refused to endorse the recommendation in the 1999 report that Whitehall should fund both nursing and personal care for all elderly people.

He told Public Finance this week: 'My view has always been that the priority for elderly people is for the standards of care to be raised. If there is enough money I would be in favour of people who can afford it having their care paid for, but it is a question of priority.'

This week, nine of Joffe's fellow commissioners launched a stinging attack on the government's failure to respond adequately to the Royal Commission's funding recommendation.

In an unprecedented critique of government progress, the commissioners restated their belief that the £1.1bn it would cost to implement free personal care was an affordable expense.

They added that the government's focus on improving services for older people, while welcome in itself, was an 'odd' response to their fair funding suggestion. 'As things stand, there is a policy vacuum in this area,' they said.

But the Department of Health echoed Joffe's remarks and said elderly people had concerns beyond who paid for their care. A spokeswoman said: 'We could spend the additional £1.4bn on free personal care, but we would buy not a single extra bed, not a single extra service, not a single break for a family carer.'

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