Social Care Crisis – Human Rights Issue.
Too Right it is!
Source: Why the social care crisis is a human rights issue
Bethany Brown researches older people’s rights with the Health and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.
Yet becoming older is something that we hope will happen to all of us, and when it does, we have the right to live independently and with community-based services to support us. And it makes financial sense too. Social care is often cheaper to deliver at home than in a residential care setting. But too often, age discrimination persists across societies, driving policy decisions that undermine human rights.
How to solve this social care crisis? The first step is to know how big it is. Without government accountability for accurate needs assessments, we’ll never know. The government also needs to understand how wider budget cuts it is making under the austerity drive are impacting social care in the country.
Until the government investigates and then acknowledges the scale of the problem, people across England are headed for uncertainty in their older years.
Bethany Brown researches older people’s rights with the Health and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.