Quote:
Originally Posted by Damien
The reason adult social care is not in crisis because of immigrant workers. The social care workers get paid little and funding has been cut. The idea they get paid little because there are Eastern Europeans willing to do for minimum wage as if there would be plenty of money otherwise is nonsense.
There is not a lot of money in providing social care for vulnerable adults, few can afford private care and this isn't a area of government spending that was ring fenced in 2010. There is a limited amount of money and if you got rid of immigrants and paid UK workers more you would have fewer social care workers until such time as the government puts even more money in or we otherwise find a way to solve this problem.
But people resent tax rises, they resent the idea their home should go to cost of providing their social care and they resent immigrants who come and take the low paid social care jobs so god knows what the answer is going to be.
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The answer is going to be that people have to pay more by hook or by crook AKA tax. As the bank of mum and dad is forced to step in more to help their kids get on the housing ladder, reduce student debts etc, including downsizing themselves, there's going to be even fewer people with assets left after so doing which are sufficient to pay for all their social care when it's needed.
There's not much of an incentive to save and accrue assets if you believe that when the time comes you may have nothing to pass on to your children because you'll have to pay for all your care and sell your house to do so. Far more sensible to help them out early on (housing prices are going up much faster then investment returns) and thereby reduce your assets because self-funders are all too often being charged far more for the same standard of care as those being funded by the LAs. They're effectively subsidising the system.
I think the only long term answer is some form of social care insurance people are required to pay into throughout their lives but that idea will go down like a lead balloon until the system we have grinds to a halt.