THE care system within the UK will not be working because “society has forgotten that living in community requires all to contribute and to receive,” the Archbishop of Canterbury has told the General Synod.
Introducing a motion, on Tuesday, to endorse the recommendations of the Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care (News, 27 January 2023), Archbishop Mullally said: “The Church is known as to say that that folks aren’t economic units for productivity, but people worthy of access to care and support, which each certainly one of us would require in our lives in some unspecified time in the future. . . Our cure of souls involves care and support of individuals’s whole lives.”
The motion called for a transparent Christian vision to fix the social care system — a plan of motion that will give equal dignity to everyone (News, 30 January).
Archbishop Mullally expressed hope that the Independent Commission on Social Care, chaired by Baroness Casey, would “initiate a national conversation about care”.
Too many individuals struggled to realize access to care; too many councils struggled to offer it; and more of the burden was falling on unpaid carers, she said. Two million people over 65 and 1.5 million of working age weren’t getting the care that they needed; others “is probably not getting the correct care in the correct place”.
She commended social prescribing as “a way of engaging with health and care services that allows people to access the wonderful activities already run by churches”, in addition to the work of the Church Urban Fund in equipping and resourcing them.
Speakers in the controversy often drew on personal experience.
The Commission’s “compelling” vision couldn’t be realised unless the shortage of the workforce was addressed, Abigail Ogier (Manchester), who worked in adult social care, said. Staff in the course of the pandemic had been held up as “heroes” — but that recognition had been “painfully short-lived”, she said. “Social care is once more being treated as an afterthought.”
Society had dismissive attitudes to disabled people, reported the Revd Alice Kemp (Bristol), whose son had complex needs. She described the “nightmare” that supported living had been, though, thankfully, she said, her son was now flourishing in residential care. “A creative care system predicates that every one are made within the image of God and loved and valued,” she said.
Prebendary Rosie Austin (Exeter) spoke of an absence of access to care in rural areas: many individuals couldn’t be discharged from hospital due to a shortage of carers — something highlighted within the diocese of Truro. “Rural residents face systematic exclusion without transport,” she said.
The Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, the lead bishop on housing, found a transparent overlap between social care and housing. The lack of retirement homes, or the unsuitability of other housing, was forcing many elderly or disabled people to struggle on alone in large houses.
She applauded recent inter-generational communities as a creative way of responding to that challenge, and urged parishes and dioceses to explore this possibility.
Jane Evans (Leeds) compared the £400,000 every week earned by a footballer with the £400 earned by a carer on the minimum wage. “What does that say about us as a society?” she asked. “Care is a calling. If we don’t value it properly, we’re saying something deeply troubling about what matters to us as a society. If our treasure is entertainment and profit, then our hearts aren’t where Jesus needs them to be.”
Synod members spoke about church initiatives, including Anna Chaplaincies, dementia care, “Hymns We Love” singing sessions in community settings, and clubs for elderly and lonely people.
“We visit them, we see them, we’re pleased to be with them: there’s a link between people being alone at home and the way the mind deteriorates in a while,” David Ashton (Leeds) said.
Peter Harris (Southwell & Nottingham), who works within the NHS, applauded the Commission’s vision as “the present way forward”. Social care needs needed to be tackled “collectively between the Church and the Government, not independently”.
The motion was carried by 245 nem. con., with one recorded abstention. It calls on the Government to attract on the Commission’s report and its deal with the notion of covenant in delivering the manifesto commitment to making a National Care Service.
