Book review: Caring in Crisis, written by Gillian Dalley.
Reviewed by Sue Jackson
Subtitled: The Search for Reasons and Post-Pandemic Remedies, this book considers the history of social care and what the pandemic revealed in practice that had been suspected before. Care provision is something that successive Governments have been ignoring for some considerable time. Having taken up the mantra of ‘care in the community’, Dalley repeats several times that because it so poorly defined, ‘care in the community’ means ‘care by the community’ and that usually means ‘care provided by the women in the community’. That seems to be the case whether we’re thinking about childcare or caring for the sick and/or elderly. If I had a criticism of the book, it’s that it doesn’t include, review, or reference the studies on the psychosocial impact for people providing care in the community.
Dalley points out that social care is something that people are only interested in when they need it, at which point they are (probably) shocked to find that unless they’re very poverty stricken, they will be expected to navigate the world of care providers unsupported. Because it is left to ‘market forces’ there is no planning of provision of social care, and most councils don’t have a definitive list of what’s available in their area, let alone how good it is. It was an eye-opener to discover that the CQC doesn’t inspect care homes each year. And to find that care homes generally don’t have good links with local hospitals.
It’s a grim situation and Dalley concludes by thinking about what kind of changes are needed to make social care services fit for purpose now and in the future. The worry is that it is going to take a major overhaul of the system that will take years to bring in, and the Government is unlikely to want to take it on. In the meantime, while there is an acknowledgement that if the Government had to provide the level of social care provided by families across the land, they’d have to fund the equivalent of another NHS, there are no plans in place to provide meaningful support for the people providing that care. I learned a lot from this book, not least that families unlucky enough to have a member needing social care are going to find it very difficult to find something suitable for them that they can afford.