25 July 2008
Services for older people are on the brink of collapse and need to be radically reshaped, MPs and peers said this week.
The all-party parliamentary local government group report called for a new deal for older people with an emphasis on personalised and preventive care coupled with a greater variety of services to help them lead independent lives.
The report also identified a need for more joined-up services and suggested that councils should take over commissioning functions from local primary care trusts.
The report, published on July 23 following a four-month long inquiry, comes as the government consults on the future of older people's care in preparation for its long-awaited green paper, expected to be published next year.
Launching the report, Labour MP Clive Betts, chair of the APPG, said: 'This report comes at quite a critical time. Clearly, society as a whole is not delivering for older people in many cases. It is right that local government takes a lead to deliver a new vision to make a difference to people's lives.'
Betts said the key to ensuring people were able to choose a care package relevant to their needs was access to good advice and information. He said there was a need for national minimum standards. But the report made no recommendations on how future care would be paid for.
Betts told Public Finance: 'We thought that if we got into that argument, we wouldn't discuss anything else. We tried to focus on other important issues about relations between social care and health care, personalised budgets, joint commissioning and those issues that we thought were more relevant to us as a local government group.'
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