I HAVE just returned from a meeting launching the health authority and Leeds Council's Carers Charter and was saddened that this was just another public relations exercise full of esoteric promises they can easily wriggle out of.
This was reinforced when the Executive Member for Social Care, Councillor Peter Harrand, posed for his photo opportunity while angry carers were squashed into an overcrowded room.
Carers don't want a charter. They want real improvements like home
care services without means testing, respite care on a regular basis and more than the measly £48 per week carers allowance paid whether they are pensioners or not. A charter is only words. We want action.
The Government will do anything but spend money. Instead of setting up a National Care Service funded from income tax, the cost is put on means- tested charges and council tax.
Why should carers trust a Conservative/Liberal council that broke its promise to abolish the means-tested charges for home care it inherited from Labour?
Carers are right to be cynical. Care is only provided if "affordable" while billions are thrown to bail out bankers' greed. The problem is care doesn't show a profit and that is an anathema to capitalists.
Care in this country is ranked poorer than the former Soviet state of Estonia but health executives are rewarded with 38 per cent pay increases while children, the disabled and elderly die of neglect and carers suffer nervous breakdowns. Please give carers your support and ask councillors and MPs to help.
On returning home after this meeting, there was a letter addressed to my wife who died two months ago. And yes. It was from our "caring" NHS!
Malcolm Naylor, Grange View, OtleyThe full article contains 293 words and appears in n/a newspaper.
