The health secretary’s conference speech marks a dangerous turning point in the rhetoric around social care
“We shouldn’t always go first to the state. What kind of society would that be,” health secretary Sajid Javid asked the Conservative party conference this week. “Health and social care begins at home. It should be family first, then community, then the state.”
The idea that the British public need to be lectured into caring for their own family will be news to the more than 9 million people who are already unpaid carers for their loved ones. As it will to the additional 4.5 million people who have started caring unpaid since the start of the pandemic. This country’s reliance on family carers is so extreme that we even expect children to do it.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist and author of Crippled: Austerity and the Demonisation of Disabled People – now out on audiobook
