Free Personal Care Plan will Exclude Working-Age Disabled Adults, Downing Street Confirms
Free personal care under the proposed National Care Service will be available only to people aged 65 and over, Downing Street has confirmed. Working-age disabled adults will not be covered.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced the plan at Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool. He described a care service built around the individual, delivered to a high standard, beginning in people’s own homes and free when it is used. He said preparatory work would begin now, with the service itself introduced in the next parliament.
He said the reform would be paid for by making the state pension “triple lock” less generous, a change the government confirmed later the same day. Mr Burnham said he intended to campaign publicly for the package, which he described as a fair settlement for older people.
His speech focused on reassuring people about care in later life and did not mention working-age disabled people. Disabled people’s organisations raised concerns, and Disability News Service (DNS), which first reported the story, sought clarification from Downing Street.
Government position
A government spokesperson told DNS that the new settlement for older people would provide free personal care alongside a state pension that rises every year. They described this as central to the government’s vision for the National Care Service and an end to decades of drift in the sector.
Ministers said that Baroness Casey’s social care commission is still developing wider recommendations covering all those who need care, including working-age adults. Proposals to address the care crisis and the charges faced by tens of thousands of working-age disabled people will not be announced until the commission publishes its final report next year.
Disabled people’s organisations respond
Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, said her organisation supported the principle of a person-centred, free-at-the-point-of-use service but was shocked that working-age disabled people had been left out. She said they make up around a third of social care users and face considerably higher charges than older people. She argued that the right to live independently in the community applies regardless of age under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and she urged the Prime Minister and Baroness Casey to involve disabled people directly in designing the service.
Fazilet Hadi, head of policy at Disability Rights UK, welcomed the commitment to a National Care Service but said the announcement raised serious questions. She asked why concern about older people paying for care from their pensions was not matched by concern for working-age disabled people, whose care charges are taken from their benefits. She also criticised what she called a paternalistic framing of care, arguing that disabled people want choice, control, independence and social connection, not just personal care. She described the exclusion of disabled people’s organisations from decisions on reform as wholly unacceptable.
Social Care Institute for Excellence chair Baroness (Glenys) Thornton, who is a Labour peer, said the national care service “must enable people of all ages, not just older people, to live with dignity, choice and control”.
“Working-age adults account for around half of all local authority spending on adult social care; their needs, aspirations and rights must be at the heart of reform alongside those of older people,” she added.
Sophia Kleanthous, the charity’s policy and campaigns officer, told a conference fringe event hosted by the New Statesman and the Free Home Care campaign that any system must be co-produced with disabled people. She called for a National Independent Living Service, free at the point of need and run alongside the NHS.
