Category Archives: Social care

English councils call for further delay to social care costs cap

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Funding and staffing shortages mean plan to introduce cap in October 2025 impossible to deliver, councils say

Long-awaited changes designed to protect individuals from having to sell their homes to meet large social care bills must be further delayed because of funding and staffing shortages, the leaders of England’s largest councils have said.

Plans to introduce a cap on social care costs – which would limit people’s lifetime care cost contributions to a maximum of £86,000 – in October 2025 will be impossible to deliver, the County Councils Network (CCN) said.

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England’s healthcare watchdog apologises over ‘new regulatory approach’

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CQC ‘got things wrong’ implementing inspection regime and new computer system, interim chief admits

England’s healthcare regulator has issued a public apology over reforms to its monitoring of tens of thousands of hospitals, care homes, dentists and GPs.

The apology from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) came in the wake of care organisations complaining of a “hostile” inspection regime and a major new computer system failing to work properly.

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‘A lot of stereotypes to break’: Children’s Inquiry musical explores life in care in Britain

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Children’s experiences form basis of play that weaves 150 years of care system history into narrative

When theatre-makers Matt Woodhead and Helen Monks gathered with a small group of children in a theatre in Essex five years ago, the plan was simple: discuss the care system.

Woodhead and Monks are co-directors of Lung Theatre, a company that has made a name for itself by tackling weighty subjects, such as the Chilcot inquiry, housing evictions and, most recently, the spate of self-inflicted deaths at Woodhill HMP, that are often investigative verbatim pieces.

The Children’s Inquiry runs 8 July to 3 August at the Southwark Playhouse

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Unpaid UK carers ‘face financial hit that can last decades’

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Loss of income, curbs on benefits and soaring bills are piling pressure on people caring for family members

People who look after family members free of charge are taking a huge hit to their finances which could continue into their retirement as they find themselves unable to balance paid work with their caring commitments.

Recent analysis of official figures by the financial firm Just Retirement found seven in 10 people who were receiving carer’s allowance were not in paid work, and missing out on earnings and private pension contributions.

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Heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua wants to open care home for retired boxers

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Boxer says ex-fighters suffer poor health and that he hopes to help them as part of his sports legacy

Anthony Joshua has said he is considering opening a care home for retired boxers with health problems.

Speaking to Lauren Laverne on Sunday’s episode of BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, the former world heavyweight champion said he had discussed issues faced by ex-fighters with his former boxing coach, John Oliver.

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Places in council-run children’s homes in England fall by third as private firms take over

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Increased reliance on private provision is pushing children hundreds of miles away from friends and family

The number of places in council-run children’s homes in England has fallen by a third since 2012 – at the same time as places in privately run profit-making children’s homes have soared, according to an Observer analysis of government data.

The dramatic fall in council-run children’s homes, and local authorities’ increasing reliance on privately run provision, have helped drive a rise in children being housed hundreds of miles from their families, with private provision clustering in cheaper parts of the country.

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Lib Dems to promise £1.5bn reform of carer’s allowance including debt amnesty

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Proposals also include a £20-a-week boost to payments and an increased limit on earnings from part-time work

The Liberal Democrats will commit to a £1.5bn overhaul of carer’s allowance, including a £20-a-week boost for more than 1 million people who devote their lives to looking after frail, ill and disabled loved ones, in their general election manifesto.

An ongoing Guardian investigation has revealed that tens of thousands of unpaid carers have been forced by the government to pay back huge sums – and in some cases have faced criminal prosecution – for minor and accidental breaches of carer’s allowance earnings rules.

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‘No one would accept blame’: Carers highlight DWP failures over debt crisis

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Carers asked to repay sums as high as £20k say officials did not share eligibility information between departments

Carers put through the wringer of carer’s allowance overpayments raise the same question time and again: they weren’t aware they had infringed benefit rules but welfare officials were. Why were they not told, rather than overpayments being allowed to run on for months, landing them with debts of thousands of pounds?

For thousands of carers who unwittingly breached carer’s allowance earnings rules and are repaying sums as high as £20,000, this may have happened because officials failed to check earnings alerts. Had they done so, the problem may have been nipped in the bud, and the debt and misery of overpayments largely avoided.

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‘It feels like contempt’: DWP tells 85-year-old dementia patient to repay £13k

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Cypriot-born Sia Kasparis, who speaks limited English, was not told about disability premium overpayment for several years

Eighty-five-year-old Sia Kasparis was in her hospital bed in the living room of her small north London flat when there was a knock at the door.

The grandmother-of-five has been bedbound for the last two years, the result of a collapsed vertebra and a range of other health problems, including vascular dementia, heart failure and kidney disease.

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Ministers clawing back £251m from carers hit by DWP’s allowance failures

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‘Strikingly large’ sum being recouped from people who fell foul of system that did not flag overpayments

Ministers are clawing back more than £250m from unpaid carers over benefit infringements that occurred largely as a result of government failures, it can be revealed.

More than 134,000 people who care for loved ones are being forced to repay often huge carer’s allowance overpayments. The debts are incurred in many cases through no fault of their own, and leave carers saddled with enormous debts, and some with criminal convictions.

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Kate Garraway: persecution of carers has ‘horrible echo’ of Post Office scandal

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Presenter, who cared for late husband, said she was approached by people in street pleading for intervention

The TV presenter Kate Garraway has said the UK government’s prosecution of unpaid carers for thousands of pounds in benefit payments has a “horrible echo” of the Post Office scandal.

In an emotional intervention on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Garraway said many people had pleaded with her to “please do something” to help those being pursued by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

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Carer’s allowance report a vivid insight into failings of an unfit system

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Little wonder welfare ministers were so reluctant the publish the study they commissioned five years ago

There are plenty of reasons why welfare ministers were reluctant to publish the study they commissioned into unpaid carers’ experiences of carer’s allowance five years ago, and which has finally emerged under duress.

In 2019 they had undoubtedly been chastened by criticism from MPs and auditors that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) did not understand how a relatively little known benefit was causing oceans of misery and hardship for carers.

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Children in danger as NSW child protection reaches crisis point, striking caseworkers say

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Public-sector workers call for pay rise, 500 additional staff and the de-privatising of out-of-home care

New South Wales child protection workers have warned that some of the state’s most vulnerable children are being neglected or put at risk of being removed from their families because resourcing problems in the sector have reached crisis point.

More than 2,000 public-sector child protection workers across the state plan to strike for part of the day on Wednesday as they call on the government to give them a pay rise, hire 500 additional staff and de-privatise out-of-home care.

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Work and pensions committee chair tells ministers to fix carer’s allowance issues

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Stephen Timms says DWP letting unpaid carers incur ‘enormous accidental overpayments’

Ministers have been told to “immediately” fix the issues causing tens of thousands of unpaid carers to incur “enormous accidental overpayments” amid growing anger over the carer’s allowance scandal.

Stephen Timms, the chair of an influential parliamentary committee, said he was “very troubled” that scores of carers were being forced into financial distress as a result of the government’s mistakes.

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UK government dementia adviser resigns over prosecutions of carers

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Johnny Timpson says he wants to ‘take a stand’ after revelations thousands of unpaid carers are being forced to pay huge fines

One of Rishi Sunak’s dementia advisers has resigned over the government’s approach towards unpaid carers, describing the prosecutions of vulnerable people as “beyond the pale”.

Johnny Timpson, who advised No 10 on its dementia strategy, said he wanted to “take a stand” after the Guardian revealed that tens of thousands of unpaid carers were being fined huge sums and in some cases prosecuted for minor infringements of earnings rules.

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DWP warns carers they could face greater penalties if they appeal against fines

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Officials at Department for Work and Pensions accused of ‘threatening and cruel’ tactics over repayment orders

Government officials have been accused of using “threatening and cruel” tactics towards unpaid carers by saying they could face even greater financial penalties if they appeal against “vindictive” benefit fines.

This month a Guardian investigation revealed that thousands of people who look after disabled, frail or ill relatives have been forced to pay back huge sums after being chased by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over “honest mistakes” that officials could have spotted years earlier.

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One in 52 Blackpool children in care as poverty soars in north of England

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£25bn of public money would have been saved between 2019 and 2023 if north had same care entry rates as south, report says

One in every 52 children in Blackpool are in care compared with one in 140 across England, leading to calls for more to be done to urgently tackle the widening north-south divide, brought on by “decades of underinvestment”.

Nine in every thousand children are in care in the north, compared with six in the rest of England, according to a report by Health Equity North.

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Revealed: hundreds of vulnerable children sent to illegal and unregulated care homes in England

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Observer investigation finds that private companies made £105m despite not being registered with Ofsted

Hundreds of extremely vulnerable school-age children in England are being sent to illegal, unregulated homes every year because of a chronic shortage of places in secure local authority units.

An Observer investigation has established that councils placed 706 children, the majority of them under the age of 16, in their care in homes that were not registered with Ofsted, the children’s social care watchdog, in 2022-23.

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Many aged care workers may wait until 2026 for full pay increase as Albanese government requests phased implementation

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Commonwealth requests Fair Work Commission phase in full 23% increase over two years to prevent workforce shortages elsewhere

Aged care workers should wait until January 2026 for the full 23% pay rise ordered by the Fair Work Commission, according to the Albanese government.

The commonwealth has requested that the commission phase in the increase over two years, from January 2025 and 2026, to prevent “large one-off wage increases” that would add to workforce shortages elsewhere in the economy.

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Aged care workers to get 23% average pay rise as union heralds move as ‘one of the best outcomes’ ever achieved

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Health Services Union secretary says new benchmark pay rate will make sector competitive with public health system

Aged care workers will receive an average pay rise of 23% after the Fair Work Commission delivered its decision in a long-running work value case.

The commission’s expert panel said those involved in direct care including nurses and home care workers deserved pay rises “substantially” higher than the interim 15% pay rise ordered in November 2022.

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