Select committee: Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 12
Fourth report: Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report
Published 22 Dec 2020
Paragraph 85
Addressed to Government Equalities Office
Women and Equalities Committee Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Government must bring forward a social care reform package, which includes the whole sector, in this financial year. There has been a tendency by successive governments to focus on the problem of rising costs of caring for elderly people, particularly in care homes, and the unfairness of being forced to sell family homes to pay for care in later life. While these are key problems for which solutions must be found, the Government’s reform package must be more wide-ranging, and include actions to improve the quality and personalisation of care and support for working age disabled people across all social care settings. It must address workforce issues across the sector, including low pay, poor career progression and high turnover. Its reforms must include a plan to more effectively integrate services and achieve parity of esteem across health and social care as a single system. The vital importance of the whole social care sector and its workforce has never been so apparent; it must now be valued accordingly.
From: Women and Equalities Committee, Fourth report: Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report (HC 1050), paragraph 85, 22 December 2020
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 14 April 2021.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the Committee's report and sets out measures taken during the pandemic, while declining some recommendations and committing to publish the National Strategy for Disabled People in Spring 2021.
- On a statutory Code of Practice on the Public Sector Equality Duty, the government says it "does not see any compelling need to depart from the normal preference of its predecessors against additional statutory codes of practice".
- On publishing assessments of disabled people's food needs, it says that, "in line with the practice of successive administrations", it "does not routinely publish EIAs".
- On the SEND review, the Department for Education "intends to publish proposals for consultation in the spring of 2021", saying the pandemic "has unavoidably delayed" the review.
- On an independent inquiry and social care reform, it says there will be "opportunities to look back" at COVID-19 but is "focused entirely" on the response for now, and will "bring forward proposals this year" on adult social care.