Tag Archives: social services

Chris Perry

Public scrutiny of lockdown exit strategy

By Chris Perry | Tue 21st April 2020 - 8:45 am

The Government must publish its “exit strategy” for easing the “lock down” for public scrutiny to avoid repeating past mistakes and ensure that when the time comes it is ready and it does not overlook anything or anyone.

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The liberal case for the need to champion social services

By Ian Thomas | Mon 4th January 2016 - 4:00 pm

As has become obvious to anyone who has read a newspaper or watched a news channel over the past 5 years, the NHS is straining under the weight of demand. With accident and emergency departments swamped, critical staffing levels and insufficient number of beds the national health provider is struggling to provide the excellent level of care that it is famed for. Alongside this, within the social services sector a perfect storm of an aging population, increased numbers of people living with long-term conditions, squeezed local authority budgets, discrepancies between the fees paid by private clients and local councils, high staff turnover and increased overhead costs has meant that for both systems the current situation is completely unsustainable.

While the government has already committed to increased spending on the NHS by £10bn per year in real terms by 2020/21 social care falls under the budget of local services and so they will continue to wither on the vine. As mentioned in a previous article, ‘Why we should care about Care’ both services work hand-in-hand, and a true integration could see money saved, lives improved and pressure reduced on both the NHS and local councils and their social services. 

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Opinion: Alice vs the system: Lessons from a lifetime of “help” from public services #3

By Anonymous Liberal Democrat | Tue 28th October 2014 - 2:30 pm

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

This is the third in the series about Alice and her experience of ‘the system’ and covers her life as a young adult. The first article, introducing the series, can be found here and the second, on her adoption and early life, here.

It’s taken me longer to write this article than I thought it would. Things have been difficult for Alice over the past few months; she has recently come off her meds and we’re dealing with the fallout (my contribution is largely indirect, trying to support my mum), and I haven’t had the heart to bring myself to write about it. David Cameron’s “family test” fired me up again though.

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Opinion: Alice vs the System: Lessons from a lifetime of “help” from public services #2

By Anonymous Liberal Democrat | Wed 23rd July 2014 - 3:45 pm

Bubbles. White rabbit. Photo by jay turnerThis is the second article in the series about Alice and her experience of “the system.” The first can be found here. Alice didn’t legally become my sister until she was 3. Alice’s adoption was the white rabbit, I guess, that we chased for the next three years.

I was too young to fully understand the nature of the legal wrangles over her adoption. From conversations with my mum and dad, the issues were twofold. First, that as foster parents it wasn’t so easy to …

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Alice vs The System: Lessons from a lifetime of “help” from public services #1

By Anonymous Liberal Democrat | Mon 7th July 2014 - 2:30 pm

Alice in Wonderland Central lark, New York. License Some rights reserved by -JvL-

Down the Rabbit Hole

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

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Caron Lindsay

Hemming helps woman in forced Caesarean and adoption case

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 1st December 2013 - 10:10 pm

The Telegraph carries a story which should make any liberal ask a lot of questions.

To summarise, a pregnant Italian woman was sent to Stansted for a training session. She was sectioned under the Mental Health Act after becoming distressed. But worse was to come:

By now Essex social services were involved, and five weeks later she was told she could not have breakfast that day. When no explanation was forthcoming, she volubly protested. She was strapped down and forcibly sedated, and when she woke up hours later, found she was in a different hospital and that her baby had

…

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Alex Foster

Battle of the emergency motions

By Alex Foster | Wed 9th September 2009 - 4:23 pm

Conference these days includes slots that are left blank when the agenda is published, and that can be filled later by topics that become evident at a later date.

The deadline for – well pretty much everything, actually, including emergency motions, amendments, appeals, questions and so on – was yesterday.

LDV is aware of two emergency motions that have been doing the rounds asking for support. Firstly there’s one insisting that social services remain accountable to local people through local councils. A government paper launched on the 14th July suggested the creation of a national care body to take some …

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