UK care centres hard hit by budget cuts.

As local councils throughout the UK face up to staying within a framework of increasingly tightening budget restraints, one of the sectors which indeed should be the last to be hit, is now becoming the first.

The public care industry, whose role it is to look after the needs of the UK’s elderly and infirm, has begun to fall victim to budget cuts, as local authorities, in an attempt to cut costs, have looked upon the weak and unprotected as an easy path to reduce costs.

Councils which are responsible for providing care to all those who live within their areas, have begun to raise the criteria for eligibility for treatment and residence in these care homes, with reports indicating that in recent months the situation has become progressively harsh. Families of the elderly and the infirm are finding it an increasingly impossible barrier to hurtle, with family members being forced to lose valuable work days in order to take care of their loved ones.

In addition, people who would at one time be eligible to receive care services, being classified within the lower levels of dependency, are now only receiving them when their needs are graded to be more acute.

A spokesperson for the adult social care department at the Local Government Association stated that around 70 per cent of councils have now set their minimum level for access to care at either ‘critical’ or ‘substantial’, which are considered to be the two highest levels of care need.

Among the suggestions included in a green paper on social care that was released in July of this year, was that a separate national insurance system for care be established. However, in reality, there is little chance of any concrete policy initiative becoming active until 2014.

In the meantime, the ever-tightening local council budgets of recession-struck Britain will continue to have a serious affect on care provision, making people with only moderate needs more likely to struggle.

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Tags: adult social care, British Economy, Credit Crunch, dependency, Economy, local council, Local Government Association, public care industry, Recession, UK care, UK Economy, UK government, UK Recession