No plans for future care for disabled adults

A new report by the charity Sense has claimed that two thirds of local authorities are unaware of how many disabled adults in their area are currently being cared for by family and friends at home.

Entitled When I’m Gone, the charity’s campaign finds that 1.7 million disabled people are currently supported by their friends and families, but 75 per cent have no plan for the day that support is no longer available.

The research also found that only a quarter of councils routinely provide support to make contingency plans for future care, and that 67 per cent of carers have profound fears about what will happen to their relative when they are no longer able to provide care.

Sense is therefore calling on the government to create a duty to ensure that plans have been put in place and provide clear information about how the system works, so that families can be supported to make plans for the future and ensure quality specialist services are available.

Izzi Seccombe, chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, said: “Thousands of disabled people and their carers are currently supported by councils through care and support services and information and advice, and this report rightly calls for government to ensure social care is adequately and sustainably funded so this can continue.

“Immediate pressures and the £2.3 billion funding gap facing social care by 2020 needs to be addressed by government in the forthcoming final Local Government Finance Settlement to help provide disabled people with complex needs, and their carers, with the care and support they rely on from their local council every day and in the future.”