Care & Support Alliance care crisis stories April 2015

We are planning to collect the stories of some people who have not been getting the support they need. The aim of this is to show the next Government that care really is in crisis. To do this we need people willing to be interviewed (it can be anonymous but it must be a real story). The plan is for the CSA Policy Group to carry out the interviews in the next three weeks so that we can have something ready soon after the election.

We know that 500,000 people are not getting support who would have got it 5 years ago. Between the 80 CSA member organisations we must be in touch with some of them. Please do everything you can to find some people willing to talk to us. The message is:

Please share your story...

It will help showitis very serious when people don’t get the support they need.

It will help get across why people must be able to getsupport.

Your story willhelp showwhy things must change.

What sort of story do we need?

The purpose of this is to demonstrate the impact of no or totally inadequate support. It needs to be easy for people with no background in social care or understanding of disability to grasp why the failure of the care system is a crisis. Unfortunately this means that the worse the situation, the more clearly it will communicate.

What we are looking for:

  • People who are getting no support, or clearly inadequate support.
  • They must still be without support – having had to fight for it, but got it in the end doesn’t work.
  • They must either be really struggling without support, or have a carer who is struggling to support them or be buying their own care and the cost of that is really making their life impossible.
  • They must be willing to be interviewed by someone from CSA, telling their story, and for that story to be used publicly.
  • They can be anonymous, although we need at least one person willing to speak to the media.
  • If they would prefer to talk to you rather than a member of the Policy Group then we can send you the standard questions we will use for the interviews.

If you can identify anyone, please could you complete the questions below and return to eally by 22 April 2015.