Social care reform: community group aims to break political deadlock

The UK's biggest group of community organisers will this week launch a campaign to cement cross-party political support by the next election for a more responsible and equitable social care system.

Citizens UK will hold rallies in 100 marginal constituencies over the next 18 months with the aim of getting all political parties to sign up to a number of policy pledges around the vexed political issue of social care.

The measures include ending the practice of councils paying for slots of just 15 minutes of care time for the elderly; legislating for carers to be paid a living wage; and ensuring that vulnerable people receiving care get help from trained, named individuals rather than a flurry of unfamiliar faces.

Tuesday's launch will be backed by private healthcare companies, including Bupa, along with London council leaders, carers and elderly people themselves, to signify the depth of feeling about the issue. The meeting comes ahead of a key speech by the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, in which he will seek to defuse rising anger over spending cuts to social care budgets.

Just before the next election Citizens UK aims to hold a leaders' debate featuring the prime ministerial candidates to force the parties' hand on social care. In the last election Gordon Brown's faltering campaign was given a boost with a rousing anti-poverty speech.

For the past two years Citizens UK says it has been talking to the 350 organisations that constitute its membership - from church groups to trade unions - to find the key issue for the next election.

The group has a track record in putting poverty issues on the political map and has sparked debates about an amnesty for long-term illegal immigrants, an interest rate cap on usury, and the living wage.

"The feedback this time was that social care was what everyone was talking about," said Matthew Bolton, the deputy director of Citizens UK. "People are feeling the impact of parents or grandparents getting older and not getting the help they need. Or being carers themselves and not being supported."Lydia Dicarlo's 75-year-old husband, Giovanni, was diagnosed with terminal prostrate cancer earlier this year and she was appalled by the level of care he initially received.

Read the full article on the Guardian website.