Free Home Care: Social care support provided free at the point of need.
Our vision is a National Care Service that places social care on the same level as the NHS, with free home care at its heart.
PROMOTES FAIRNESS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Disability, dementia, illness, and frailty should be treated as shared social risks, not individual financial liabilities. We do not means-test medical care, so why do we means-test help with basic health care such as washing, dressing, drinking, and eating?
MAINTAINS INDEPENDENT LIVING
Home care aligns with most people’s preference for maintaining autonomy and ageing well in their own homes surrounded by family, friends, and familiarity, rather than in institutions.
MAKES ECONOMIC SENSE
Preventative home care reduces falls, infections, dehydration, malnutrition, and physical and mental decline. It decreases ambulance call-outs, hospital admissions, delayed discharges, and readmissions. It’s also significantly cheaper than hospital beds and residential care.
SUPPORTS UNPAID CARERS
Home care supports unpaid carers, who are the invisible backbone of the system and save the public purse billions of pounds each year. It reduces the risk of burnout, income loss, and ill health among carers, enabling families to sustain informal care arrangements and remain economically active.
INTEGRATES HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
When home care is unaffordable, unavailable, or rationed, the NHS bears the consequences through increased hospital admissions, delayed discharges, and readmissions. This highlights the urgent need for an effective National Care Service that works alongside and supports the NHS.
EMBRACES CURRENT SOCIAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL TRENDS
Advances in assistive technology, telecare, and artificial intelligence are creating new opportunities for a major expansion of home-based support.
BUILDS ON EXISTING SOCIAL CARE INNOVATIONS
Free home care complements home-based care innovations already being developed across the UK. These include meals-on-wheels services, Shared Lives schemes, technology-enabled care, telecare, AI-supported social care tools, Hospital at Home programmes, integrated neighbourhood health teams, and age-friendly neighbourhoods.
DRIVES LOCAL ECONOMIC GROWTH
A universal home care system would create skilled, community-based employment and support job creation in domiciliary care and related roles in every town, city, village, hamlet, and homestead in the country.