In June a number of Sheffield residents and representatives of disabled people’s organisations joined together with the Disability Hub and Disability Sheffield to discuss the difficulties they faced around social care.
As part of the Festival of Debate we took service users’ experiences and shared them directly with Phil Holmes, Director of Adult Social Care at Sheffield City Council. By coming together it gave an opportunity to strengthen concerns on issues such as service cuts, zero hours contracts, decommissioning the Independent Living Und (ILF), the effects of Brexit, and the merging of Social care and NHS care.
Even the Prime Minister has said her ministers ‘now need to improve social care‘ but indicated a lack of urgency by saying, any new funding settlement for social care would not be announced until the next spending review, which was not expected until the end of 2019!
Because of the delay, including the release of the Government Green paper on long term funding for social care for those above retirement age, the Local Government Association (LGA) is taking a stand and seeking feedback via consultation on all adult social care. Disability Sheffield and the Disability Hub welcome this approach because the crisis is affecting all age groups and people’s very independence is at risk.
You can, if you wish, respond directly to the LGA consultation and joining instructions are listed in our link below. At the same time, we would be grateful if you would please respond to our own consultation and help us identify more readily some of the issues facing disabled people and others here in Sheffield.
By responding quickly you can help us submit a response on behalf of adult social care users in Sheffield. As well as outlining our ideas to the solution to pay for adult social care in the long-term we can also outline citizens’ concerns to decision-makers locally.
Have your say on your social care and your own future and take action. Please give your views here .