24 June 2013

The social care system is on its knees: what is the Chancellor going to do?

This week's Spending Review and next week's Lords debate of the Care Bill provide the government with opportunities to start solving our care crisis.

On Wednesday millions of older and disabled people who rely on support from their council to get up, get washed and dressed and get out will be closely following the Chancellor’s Spending Review.

The social care system is on its knees.

Budget cuts to councils have seen them upping the bar for eligibility for support, with 83 per cent of councils now setting the threshold at a higher level. According to London School of Economics 69,000 disabled people have been pushed out of the system.

At the same time many are squeezing the support for those that are in the system. A Scope survey found almost 40 per cent of disabled people who continue to receive social care support are not having their basic needs met including eating properly, washing, dressing or being able to get out of the house.

The consequences are dire. Take away the preventative support and people fall into crisis.

It’s no surprise that there’s now a widening consensus that the crisis in local care is a factor in the pressures on A&E.

It’s also no surprise that there’s cross-sector and cross party backing for the Chancellor to use the Spending Review to invest in preventative social care.

Intriguingly on Friday there were strong hints that the Department for Communities and Local Government, while potentially taking a 10 per cent budget cut, could take responsibility for £3bn from other departments' budgets.

The momentum is there and social care looks set to be a crucial Spending Review issue.

But in case the Chancellor needs further convincing let me introduce Angela Murray.

Angela is an independent, sociable young woman who has a degree in psychology. She volunteers three days a week. She’s also disabled; she was hit by a car when she was two.

For the last ten years, she’s lived in her own home and has had support from her council to get up, get washed, get dressed, go to the toilet, cook, eat and shop.

But recently her social worker told her that her care was being cut from 20 hours-a-day to just three hours. Angela was given five days’ notice.

Angela described her new care routine as ‘depressing and undignified’. She had to be in bed at 9.30pm every night. She also lived off microwave meals because her 30 minute evening call didn’t give the carer enough time to cook for Angela as well as take her to the toilet.

Angela says if she has to live under that regime for the next 50 years, life would not be worth living. She’s fighting back: the local media have already covered Angela’s story and she has a solicitor on board fighting the changes.

The council, reluctantly, agreed to temporarily reinstate Angela’s old care package until a second reassessment, when her care package is likely to be cut again.

And while we’re at it, let me also introduce the 45,000 members of the public who have signed Angela’s petition calling on the Chancellor to invest in social care. It’s clear that Britain cares about social care.

Wednesday will be crucial. But it doesn’t stop there.

The following week the Government will publish its plans for deciding who is in and out of the social care system. This is critical.

The announcement will come as the Care Bill is debated in the Lords. The reforms seek to tackle the crisis in care by introducing a cap on costs, a new means-testing threshold and national eligibility to end the postcode lottery in care.

But the plans, as they are, will also raise the bar for eligibility to social care (see p32 of the White Paper). According to the London School of Economics (LSE) this will leave 105,000 disabled people outside of the system altogether.

If the Chancellor takes the opportunity to invest in social care, that cash needs to be channelled into a system in which disabled people are eligible for care before their situation has deteriorated into crisis.

Properly funded social care is now a ‘no brainer’.

Research by Deloitte has shown that investing in £1.2bn in social care for disabled people will result in a £700m return for central Government and £570m return for local Government and NHS, because it prevents disabled people falling into crisis and needing to access more costly support.

By acting decisively the Chancellor can go a long way to solving the social care crisis, protect A&Es, and save cash across government departments. It’s a triple win.

But the Government will only be able to claim that it’s solved the social care crisis once it has decided who is in and who is out of the system.

Richard Hawkes is chief executive of the disability charity Scope

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Take away the preventative support and people fall into crisis. Photograph: Getty Images

Richard Hawkes is chief executive of the disability charity Scope.

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25 November 2016

Jill Stein’s call for a recount of the US election result is a public service – but is it possible?

Hacking claims and slim margins are spurring people on to fund the Green Party nominee’s campaign for a recount in some states.

Jill Stein didn’t stand even a remote shot at winning the White House, but her efforts to secure recounts in swing states that went to Donald Trump will likely be her greatest political moment – even if those efforts end up failing.

Stein has launched a campaign to raise more than $2m to fund voter recounts in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania; as of today, more than $4.5m has been raised, which is more than the $3,509,477 contributors gave to Stein’s 2016 campaign; the goal has now been raised to $7.

Hillary Clinton hasn’t released an official statement on the recount push.

Citing concerns of alleged cyber hacks, Stein, the former Green Party presidential nominee, and a group of scientists from the University of Michigan, led by Professor of Computer Scienc J. Alex Halderman, are calling for an audit of voting results in the three aforementioned states. Although Halderman admits that it’s unlikely hacking took place, he argues in a Medium post that there are too few checks and balances to stop manipulating voting machines being a real possibility.

What is also fuelling Stein’s drive are admissions by top US security officials that Russian cyberhackers broke into the Democratic National Committee and Florida state servers this summer.

That said, is a recount possible? Yes, but very unlikely.

The deadline to file for a recount in Wisconsin is Friday 25 November. Pennsylvania’s is the following Monday and Michigan’s is Wednesday. Stein’s efforts have also been met with suspicion and outright doubts that the election manipulated.

In order to make a compelling argument that the very time-consuming task of recounting votes is worth it, Stein and her supporters would have to present some pretty convincing evidence of wrongdoing. So far, none of her supporters have produced such evidence.

Michigan’s director of elections says the state doesn’t use electronic voting machines, making a hack pretty much impossible. Even Halderman, the top cyberhacking expert, says the election was likely not the victim of a cyberattack.

“Probably not,” Halderman writes. “I believe the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked.”

A recount, he argues, is the only surest way to know.

The main problem with Halderman’s argument, though, is that Clinton, who actually had a shot at beating Trump, doesn’t seem interested. Her margins of defeat in the swing states in question were pretty close, so states would likely grant a recount if she asked. But she hasn’t, and that doesn’t bode well for Stein and her supporters.

During Clinton’s concession speech after it was clear that Trump won, she told her supporters to accept Trump as “our president”.

Another problem with Stein’s recount efforts is her public image in American mainstream media. Fair or unfair, she really is not well-respected outside of her liberal Green Party circles. Billed by her detractors as the “spoiler” candidate, views on Stein’s political outlook have ranged from “weird” to outright “nutty”.

And while she appeared on several televised townhalls, Stein never debated on the main stage because our debate commission rules require candidates to prove they have a shot at winning an electoral college vote or have at least 15 per cent support in national polling; she never came close to that number.

None of this matters when asking if Stein’s calls for a recount are legitimate. Because they are. Her efforts have forced Americans to question if election officials are taking every step possible to ensure that the first tally of votes were counted properly and accurately in the first place. As Vox recently reported, America’s recount laws are outdated. And we do need to gain a better understanding of how votes are counted and double-checked for accuracy.

If a bank teller asks us to count our money before we leave the booth, why shouldn’t we do the same for counting votes in states where the margin of victory was so slim for Trump? And Halderman does make a good point that because hackers are so sophisticated, signs of hacking may not be immediately obvious.

Many of us in the American press who have been covering this election know very little about the nuances of individual states’ recount laws and the voter count process, no matter how much a few of us claim to.

Some of Stein’s critics are saying that she is pushing this recount drive for her own personal gain. I can’t read her brain, so I won’t make such a judgement. But, what is clearly apparent is that Stein’s insistence that each vote was properly counted can’t do anything but bolster confidence in the American election process. And if that means some her critics are forced to see her face more than they wish, so be it.

Our democracy will become stronger each day she demands an audit of the system citizens depend on to elect men and women to the most important posts in American government.

Terrell J. Starr is a political correspondent based in New York. He specialises in Russian-US politics.