The Final Countdown

By Claire Nurden, Research and Policy Officer

Of all the challenges that Dilnot has faced in his review of social care over the past year, the final key decision seems to have boiled down to this: do we or do we not compel people to contribute to the potential future costs of their social care?

General speculation has certainly pointed in the direction of an insurance scheme to help people protect themselves against the cost of future care and support needs, but as the ABI suggests, the general public currently have little awareness of the need, or indeed willingness, to pay into a scheme of this sort, especially if a state funded option is available as a safety net.

A serious anomaly exists here. Without making contributions to an insurance scheme for social care compulsory, the most effective incentive to encourage people to sign up is to make the state funded option unattractive. But not only would this be unfair to people that have been forced to rely on the state funded option as a result of financial hardship, but deliberately constructing a sub-standard system of social care is unacceptable, if not immoral, in a civilised society.