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TVoices from Bradford East Endorse Government’s Social Care Reforms
David Ward MP talking to Lawrence and Barbara Brocklesby at the Carlisle Business Centre after presenting his study
Bradford East MP David Ward has today published his research into Social Care in Bradford and the positive effects that the Draft Care and Support Bill will have locally.
Reforming Social Care: Voices from Bradford East is a piece of research undertaken by David Ward MP, in collaboration with key local stakeholders, which consulted 35,000 local households on the proposals within the draft Care and Support Bill. The research was designed to give residents of Bradford a voice in shaping the current reforms proposed within the Draft Care and Support Bill and will be submitted as evidence to the Joint Committee currently scrutinising the legislation.
Key findings from the research include:
- Overwhelming support for maintaining Bradford's home care eligibility threshold at the 'moderate' level.
- With low average house prices and an extended means test of £123,000 in 2017, residents of Bradford will benefit significantly from the lifetime cap on care costs.
- Strong support for funding a cap on care costs from within current spending on older people.
- Due to the large percentage of care home top-up fees paid in Bradford, more needs to be done to investigate the sustainability and suitability of the current local authority rate.
- Due to high levels of loneliness, council's need to work in partnership with community organisations and schools to encourage and develop innovative schemes to support older people living in social isolation.
- Having already introduced some welcome measures to increase the quality of care, there is a strong argument for Bradford Council to take a greater role in driving up standards among independent sector care providers.
- Evidence suggests that Bradford Council should increase efforts to raise awareness of care services among ethnic minority communities. The Council needs to do more to engage with and enable harder to reach communities to access support services and ensure appropriate support services are available within the area.
- Due to waiting times in adaption services, The Council needs to review the delivery of adaptation services and find ways to drive down waiting times.
Commenting David said:
"The thing that I am most proud of is that this research was a real joint effort with fantastic local contributions. It was crucial that Bradfordians were aware of the social care reforms but more importantly that they had an opportunity to contribute to the legislation with the voices and views of Bradford East being heard at the centre of this process".
"The research highlights that residents of Bradford will benefit significantly from the Government's reform proposals especially with the introduction of a lifetime cap on care costs and an extended means test of £123,000. However, our research uncovered concerns about people's ability to pay for the cap and would welcome further research into the possibility of regional caps on care costs".
"I believe that our research is really important locally and I hope it helps gives impetus to finding effective solutions on things like the need for more specialised housing, reduced waiting times for adaptations, increased quality of care and the need to reach out to older people and harder to reach groups".