On 14 July 2009 the Government published a Green Paper called 'Shaping The Future of Care Together.' 
 'Shaping the Future of Care Together' set out a vision for a new care and support system. Their aim is to develop a National Care Service that is fair, simple and affordable for everyone. It set out a number of questions and asked everyone to provide their views about how they think the Government can make this vision a reality.

The LINk did a survey of local people and groups to put a response together. This was done by postal questionnaire and discussion at local group meetings. There were 235 replies to the questionnaire. The main points raised include:

• The proposed National Care Service could provide good support for people who need it.
• Access to information and advice; choice between good quality services and services that help people to remain more independent as they get older (or become disabled) are more important than having a national assessment.
• People made a range of suggestions about how services can be improved.
• People recognised that some things that already happen in Tameside will help with this, they also suggested things that might make the changes difficult to achieve.
• The focus for any care service must be on how it helps each individual person – not on how well it meets national targets.
• People who have paid National Insurance throughout their adult lives feel that the current charging system is unfair and are worried that the proposals might make this even worse.

There’s more information about the Green Paper at: http://careandsupport.direct.gov.uk/

You can see our response at  Tameside LINk - Green Paper response 

We will be publishing a fuller analysis of our questionnaire data in the new year.