Liberal Democrats

A Caring Community

Policies for Community Care


Putting People First
Liberal Democrat policies on community care aim to provide effective support for people with special needs, older people and disabled people, in order to enable them to realise their full potential. We aim to ensure that all people in the care of the community are treated with dignity and respect, rather than stigmatised and devalued. 

Liberal Democrats would:

* Encourage independent living wherever practical and allow local authorities to give direct payments to individuals, thus enabling them to design the package of services they receive.
* Establish a National Care Commission to monitor care for older people, perform an advocacy role for the consumer, and encourage innovation and service improvement. 


* End charging for 'personal care', as defined by the Royal Commission report, and giving this a high priority for resources.
* Improve both the quality of life of carers and the level of support that they receive.

Planning and Delivering Community Care 

We would:
* Allow democratically elected Regional Governments to take over the NHS Executive Regions to provide democratic accountability for strategic planning of health and social care.
* Widen the composition of Primary Care Trusts to include local social services representation.
* Fully involve local authorities in the setting of Health Improvement Plans for their areas.
* Use pooled budgets in the context of Health Improvement Plans to promote integrated delivery of social and health care.

Putting the User in Charge

We would:
* Establish Age Care Assessment Teams that would bring together all the relevant professions and skills around a single assessment and delivery gateway. These multi-disciplinary assessments should be to delay the onset of illness or dependency and increase autonomy and quality of life.
* Establish high national standards and an inspectorate to ensure those standards are maintained.
* Put advocacy services on a stronger footing. Entitling people to call on the services of an independent intermediary to act for and on their behalf in dealings with those arranging care.


Providing Quality Services

We would:
* Create a comprehensive framework for training and retraining professional staff so they can hand their knowledge on to other carers.
* Increase flexibility in the deployment of professional staff by making training more cross disciplinary.
* Develop the National Register for Carers, Assessors and Verifiers to facilitate the distribution of guidelines for carers.
* Provide disability awareness training for people providing services outside the social care field.
* Provide information and practice training to enable a smooth transition of care from professional carers to an informal carer.
* Require all care homes to publish their charges with the National Inspectorate having the power to 'cap' excessive charges. 

Improving Quality of Life 

We would:
* Increase the basic state retirement pension in a targeted fashion, starting by increasing the basis state pension by £5 a week for all, £10 per week for the over 75s, and £15 per week for the over 80s as a first step. We would gradually extend the basic state pension to all pensioners, regardless of contribution history.
* Reform current Disability Benefits to provide opportunities for those who can and want to work while ensuring security for those who cannot. We would relax the rules which restrict the amount of 'therapeutic' work which those receiving disability benefits can undertake without loss of benefit. We would also revise the All Work Test to take employability into account.
* Increase investment in the NHS, particularly in health promotion.
* Improve the accessibility of transport, buildings and leisure services.
* Provide encouragement for specialist housing associations that meet the housing and supply needs of people in community care.

Carers
We would:
* Ensure carers are fully involved in the process of needs assessment and have their needs assessed separately.
* Credit those who care for elderly, sick or disabled people, or who care for children, into our Owned Second Pension Account. This would provide those who have been unable to make contributions of their own with a guarantee of a decent income in retirement.
* Increase training for all those involved in providing care, whether paid or unpaid.
* Extend the provision of respite care and guarantee the right of carers to have their care needs assessed separately.
Policies stated in this briefing represent policy passed by the conference of the Liberal Democrats. A fully costed manifesto containing our priorities for government is published at each general election.

This briefing contains extracts from the Policy Paper No. 1 A Caring Society; Policy Review Paper, Moving Ahead - Towards a Citizens' Britain; Policy Paper 34, Breaking Down Barriers; Policy Paper 36, A Clean Bill of Health
February 2001				Produced by the Policy Unit.
Printed by Liberal Democrats, 4 Cowley Street, London SW1P 3NB

Published and Promoted by Chris Rennard, 4 Cowley Street, London SW1P 3NB



		A Caring Society