By Simon Bottery, Director of Policy and
Communications 
"It will take a major scandal to get social care reform into the
media and bring about any real political change," a senior care
industry figure suggested to me this month.
An odd statement, in a way, because 2011 was full of social care
scandals in the media. There was Winterbourne View, the Southern
Cross debacle, and abuse in homecare highlighted by the Equalities
and Human Rights Commission. All of them scandals and all of them
about social care. Yet still no guarantee of political change.
He was right, though, in the sense that none of these scandals
were reported as crises of our social care funding system. They
were seen as failures of companies, 'the market' and the CQC. Or
they were reported as 'abuse' by individuals. Rarely were they put
in the context of a funding system that is falling apart at the
seams.
It is still early, of course, but there are some signs that this
is changing. Already this month, there has been as much media
discussion about the proposals of the Dilnot Commission as there
was in July, when the report was launched. Quick analysis of
coverage of 'Dilnot' search results in Google news - shown in
the table below - shows that while coverage did drop off after the
report's launch, the recent Care and Support Alliance letter to the
Prime Minister (published in The Daily Telegraph) has
brought the issue back.
The problem is the quantum. 47 media mentions is better than
none, but try searching Google news for 'Leveson' - the head of the
current tabloid newspaper inquiry - and you will get thousands of
hits. Leveson and Dilnot are both serious inquiries into serious
issues affecting millions of people, but only one has had Hugh
Grant give evidence to it. And only one of them is going to lead
our news day after day after day.
We need to accept that social care funding is never going to
reach Leveson levels of media coverage. But that may not matter. Of
course the policy agenda is influenced the media, but it's not
determined by it. A continued drip-drip of media coverage may just
be enough to keep reform on course.
Figure 1: mentions of 'Dilnot' in Google news
search
Dilnot-o-meter verdict: Too close to call.
