Social care services are in even greater peril as figures show that councils are battling huge debts and scores of providers are selling up. The public services union, Unison has renewed the call for a national care service, releasing a strategy document, Care after Covid, to make the case for a radical shakeup.
A national care service is not a new concept, appearing in the 2010 Labour manifesto and again in 2017, although on this week’s Andrew Marr show, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor- Anneliese Dodds seemed less certain about the commitment; elsewhere a host of commentators and organisations are now backing the return to a more publicly driven structure.
This latest exploration of the idea by Unison links past and present, making the case that Covid-19 has cruelly exposed the vulnerabilities in our care system that grew from a decade of austerity and from privatisations that started in the 1980s.
Full story in The Lowdown, 7 July 2020