Britain is getting older and sicker, while a greater share of its population has a disability. While these trends affect the whole of society, they are starkest in the poorest half of working-age families across the country. While we talk a lot about the effects of ageing and ill-health, the implications on demand for unpaid care is largely absent from political debate.
Prof Liz Sayce, the chair of a scathing review into the government's treatment of unpaid carers, last week called for an overhaul of management and culture at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Days after the publication of the review, the DWP's top civil servant in charge of carers' allowance, Neil Couling, said carers themselves were at fault for the decade-long failures.
Family members of Jean Charles de Menezes gather for a vigil outside Stockwell Underground station, marking the 20th anniversary of his death by police mistakenly identifying him during a counterterrorism operation.
The three-year strategy will be rolled out this autumn and reflects the voices of nearly 4,000 carers, according to Lucia das Neves, the council's cabinet member for health, social care and wellbeing.
I can't believe what they're putting people through, she said. [I'm] just a law-abiding person, who has never broken the law in my life. I've always tried to do things by the book.
