‘postcode lottery’ – that the care people are offered depends as much on where they live as it does on what they need. Different councils have different levels of funding and make different decisions about how much to spend and on what.

People with disabilities are generally viewed through a lens of vulnerability and neediness (Survation, 2021). This contributes to the ‘othering’ of people with care needs in contrast to the positive and full-throated support for the NHS that we see as ‘ours’.

more working-age people, usually with disabilities or other kinds of need, are getting support. They now account for almost a half of what councils spend on social care. Currently one in three people aged between 16 and 64 in the UK has a long-term health condition, and one in five people aged between16 and 64 in the UK has a disability.

Means testing is one of the deepest fault lines between the NHS and social care.

a new funding settlement that positions social care as a major public service in its own right, on a par with other universal services such as education and health care.

Over-reliance on residential and nursing homes is unsustainable because of rising demand and costs of services, and it flies in the face of what most people want.

Lesson 4: Improve public awareness of social care

Southern and eastern European and Latin American countries rely heavily on informal and unpaid family care, with the state offering a very basic safety net through taxation or social insurance.

described experiences of using care services as ‘time consuming, overwhelming, frightening, intimidating’