Gaby Hinsliff’s piece will have resonated with anyone who has ever given frail parents everything that is lumped together under the label of “care” (The shrunken state expects families to fill the voids in health and social care. Woe betide those without children, 9 August). It has always been the case in this country that families, and especially daughters, bear the brunt of responsibility for such care. What has changed on the one hand, as she points out, are the demographic shifts to smaller families and extended life expectancy. On the other hand, though, simultaneously and perversely, the state has withdrawn vital support for those families providing care, such as home helps, meals on wheels and daycare.
This process began under Thatcher, who privatised residential services and, in the name of efficiency, forced councils to outsource community services. Spending cuts led to the concentration of those residualised services on the most highly dependent. Thereby the critical function of social care in preventing the breakdown of family care disappeared and it became an emergency, last-resort service only.
