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.
