Camphill Families and Friends recently submitted a paper contributing to the new Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care.
The commission aims to stimulate a national debate about the nature and purpose of care and to offer practical recommendations to national and local government, policymakers, the care sector and society as a whole, about how to deliver this vision.
Our paper, which is available here, emphasises that:
- the Commission could play a vital role in halting, and ideally reversing, the trend in recent years to narrow the choice of models for living which are available to the learning disabled. Camphill is an example of an intentional community model which would benefit from support. Further research on costings and effectiveness of different models of care should be undertaken. An informed public debate is important.
- immediate attention is needed to address the considerable evidence that significant numbers of learning disabled people are being mistreated. The Care Quality Commission’s (CQC’s) remit should explicitly require that body to inspect all residential accommodation used by the learning disabled.
- public funds should be ring fenced and allocated specifically to staff training for those caring for the learning disabled
- support for the learning disabled should be given a much higher profile.
Read our full contribution here.
We hope we may hear back from the Commision in due course.
