‘Adult care – the Cinderella service’, comments Cllr Howard Sykes, LGA Lib Dem Group Leader

The list of issues and concerns of local government is growing as we meet at the LGA conference in Birmingham.

The NHS will celebrate its 70th birthday this year after a difficult decade since the financial crisis, culminating in one of the most testing years in our history.

The terrorist attacks in London and here in Greater Manchester, along with the Grenfell Tower tragedy, saw all emergency services, including NHS staff, respond with skill and bravery. So the £20 billion extra a year is very welcome. Shame it has taken until now and is wrapped up in some post-Brexit dividend smoke screen.

But one can’t help but wonder whether the clamour to influence the size of the Prime Minister’s promised multi-year funding plan for the NHS will impact on adult social care’s own ‘present’ – the care and support Green Paper. Will this include any extra cash for social care? Who knows, as it has been delayed yet again.

Adult social care has its 50th birthday with the anniversary of the Seebohm report, which laid the foundations for the model of adult social care and support we know today.

We will have to wait and see. Despite Mrs May producing a glass slipper, I think once again Cinderella will be overlooked.

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