Earlier this week, I went along to a roundtable discussion event
in Parliament organised by Macmillan to talk about free social care at the end
of life. This event was part of our campaign, calling for all patients at the
end of life to get the social care support they need to allow them to be cared
for at home until they die if they so choose.
Macmillan, along with five other national charities – the
Motor Neurone Disease Association, Marie Curie, Help the Hospices, the National
Council for Palliative Care and Sue Ryder – is calling on the government to make
social care free for everyone in the final weeks and months of life.
The roundtable event brought together MPs, social care
experts, representatives from the charities campaigning on this issue and Cancer
Voices. We talked about the importance of social care to helping people remain
in their own homes at the end of life, and discussed some of the barriers that
currently prevent this from happening for everyone.
The MPs who attended the event were keen to do what they
could to keep this issue at the top of the political agenda. If you would like
to support our campaign, please sign our open letter to the Department of
Health calling on them to make sure that free social care at the end of life
remains a priority and becomes a reality.
