Alison McGovern: Everyone needing care deserves to be treated with fairness, dignity and respect

Feb 29 2012 Bromborough and Bebington News

READERS may know I am concerned about care for older people because I, like many of my constituents, have elderly relatives and know of people who, if they do not need care now, could well do so in the future.

The responses to a care survey I conducted 12 months ago highlighted poor communication about the help that is currently available, worries about getting ill when your family live in another part of the country, the isolation that carers sometimes have to endure and the view that sufferers of ‘chronic’ conditions should not have to pay for nursing care out of their estate.

Surely it does not have to be like this.

Everyone needing care deserves to be treated with fairness, dignity and respect. To be offered anything less is completely unacceptable.

The current challenge is to uphold these standards whilst improving service delivery at a time when the NHS is being required to make sizeable efficiency savings and local authority budgets are being massively cut.

This is why I have asked the Shadow Minister for Older People, Liz Kendall MP, to attend a seminar on care I have organised taking place in Bebington Civic Centre at 6.30pm on March 8.

The purpose of the event is to hear from people who both use and who provide care services about what they want from those services in years to come.

The event was planned before the Anna Klonowski report was published and it is not intended to be a forum to discuss that report. However, clearly this report has reconfirmed the importance of this issue.

Anyone wishing to attend the event should register their interest either through my website at www.alisonmcgovern.org.uk/ caremeeting or by telephoning the constituency office on 645 6590.