“See What Care Is Really Like” — Campaigner’s Plea to PM
A Social care campaigner and care home owner has launched a direct video appeal and written to Prime Minister Andy Burnham, urging him to meet residents and care staff in Scarborough and see first-hand the reality of the UK’s ‘broken care system’, as the PM prepares to tour the North.
Mike Padgham, Honorary President of the Independent Care Group and owner of five care homes in Scarborough, has joined forces with two women who have relatives in care, Caroline and Ann, to speak on behalf of families and care workers across the country who feel their experience has gone unheard for too long.
The appeal follows Mr Burnham’s recent comments about his father’s experience of dementia care, made during a speech at a care home in Golders Green on 29 July, in which the Prime Minister set out his ambition to build a National Care Service and described the current system as ‘unfair as American healthcare’.
Mike, who has been campaigning for over 35 years, has also invited Health Secretary Yvette Cooper to join the visit. In 2021, Ed Balls, Yvette’s husband, joined Mike for a BBC documentary about social care, filmed at some of Mike’s care homes. As part of the programme, he experienced life as both a staff member and a resident, including spending several weeks working and living in a care home to better understand the realities of care work.
The tone of the appeal is deliberately constructive. Mike says he is hopeful the new Prime Minister will follow through on his promises, but is wary too, given that promises have been made by successive governments for decades, yet “nothing has changed.”
“I hope the Prime Minister will act as he says he will,” Mike said. “But he has an enormous amount on his plate. So why not let the people who understand this sector, who live it every single day, help him get it right? This isn’t about pointing fingers. It’s about offering a hand and showing him the everyday reality. People should not have to use up their life savings to fund their care. We need a National Care Service today.”
The BBC documentary ‘Inside the Care Crisis’ was filmed in 2021 at St Cecilia’s in Scarborough. Despite reaching a national audience, Mike says no minister of any government has visited since.
“Ed Balls came, and he got it,” Mike said. “He saw the complexities that care staff deal with every day. But since then, in all this time, not one minister has walked through our doors. That’s why this invitation to the PM matters. Come and see it, Andy. The realities we face every day. The associated costs, the struggles to recruit and retain staff. Then let’s talk about how to fix it together. There are a lot of people out there in our sector with expertise to help you.”
In the online video, Mike says: “Andy, congratulations on becoming Prime Minister and I warmly welcome the words you’ve said about social care. The challenge is now to make that happen, of course. So I’d like to invite you over to Scarborough to see for yourself, delivering social care first hand. In all my years of campaigning, we’ve never had a senior politician, let alone the Prime Minister, visit us. So, with Alison Hume, our MP, who does a fantastic job, come over with her, see what we’re doing. We will offer you some help to get social care changed. We’ve got some positive ideas. I’d just like five minutes of your time to explain how it could be done quicker. We want to help you and thank you for what you’ve said about social care so far. The government cannot do this all on its own.”
Caroline, 53, whose mother-in-law Wendy is in Mike’s care, said: “Wendy had to sell everything she’d worked really hard for over all these years, in order to fund her social care over the last 20 years, since she developed dementia.”
Ann, 75, whose relative, also called Wendy, is in a care home in Norfolk and paying £1,200 a week from her life savings, added: “My relative has been in a care home for ten years. We’re paying one thousand two hundred pounds a week for her keep. We really want to start a discussion to find out what is going to happen going forward. It can’t go on forever like this.”
The appeal lands at a critical moment for the sector. Delayed discharges are now costing the taxpayer more than £2 billion a year, with around 12,000 hospital beds occupied daily by patients who no longer need to be there, at a cost of £562 per bed per day, according to NHS England calculations. Self-funder care fees are rising by an average of 10%, and the UK is projected to need an extra 144,000 care home beds over the next decade simply to keep pace with an ageing population.
Mr Burnham has pledged to accelerate Baroness Louise Casey’s Independent Commission on social care, now due to report by summer 2027, and to hold cross-party talks on a National Care Service. Mike says the sector welcomes that ambition and wants to help deliver it.
“We’re not asking for sympathy,” Mike said. “We’re offering expertise. If the Prime Minister wants to fix this, and I believe he does, then come to North Yorkshire, meet the people who can help you do it properly.”
The Independent Care Group’s campaign aims to start the constructive conversations it believes are long overdue, around funding, workforce pay, delayed discharge and the future shape of care in the UK.
