A Good Life, Should be the Life We Want to Live

For the last few weeks I have been totally embracing the unremitting sunshine and summer heat. It’s been great to be able to be outside from sun rise to sunset, and beyond. I have grown vegetables for the table, walked every day, sat outside and enjoyed the company of others and acquired a deep chestnut suntan. Last night I watched with utter dismay the latest news of the floods in Mumbai, India. It’s a part of the world I love for its vibrancy, colour, sounds and bustle. Yesterday and for the foreseeable future, much of the city was completely submerged under the filthy flood waters. The dismay and bewilderment on the faces of the young and old was heart-breaking to see. 

These 2 extremes of weather are unusual. Europe is having its hottest summer in some 30 years, and we are told to expect more like this. It’s one of the consequences of climate change. Leaving aside the ill-informed views on climate change by President Genghis Can’t over there in the US, it’s clear from the science that the world climate is changing. Professor Judith Curry, formerly of the Georgia Institute of Technology is an expert on climatology. She is the co-author of the Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans and has published over 1140 scientific papers. Sadly for us, she retired from academia in 2017. Whilst I am not a climatologist, what I like about her work is the balance she brings to the debate. 

She notes (see here) that the world is warming, and  activity has contributed to this warming. Almost 98% of people agree with these statements, but it’s the degree of cause and effect that tends to result in polarised arguments over just how much we are contributing to the earth’s climate changes. I would say, and I’m still not a climatologist, that even if there was any room for doubt on the science we should still be taking action to safeguard the maintenance of a liveable climate for us all. I’m not alone in this thought. Last week, writing in the Guardian newspaper, Rupert Read, a philosopher at the University of East Anglia, and chair of the Green House think tank argued that even the absence of certainty over the risks of catastrophic harm to the environment or public health should not stop us from taking preventive action now. 

Now this was meant to be blog about the excellent Green Paper launched last week by the Local Government Association on the future of adult social care and wellbeing – the Green Paper is called The Lives We Want to Lead. This shouldn’t be confused with the 2015 film The Lives We Lead. Although it is a great film and does share some similarities with the Green Paper’s life journey approach in describing the context and issues. Councils spend £15 billion on social care every year. By next year councils will potentially have to spend 38p of every £1 council tax on adult social care. Of course as more gets spent on social care, less money is available for other services. However, Age UK estimates that there are already 1.4 million older people who do not receive the help they need. This is help with 3 or more daily activities such as washing, dressing, and going to the toilet.  

Good quality social care and support can help people live the life they want to live. When it’s effective, it helps build and sustain our communities; it effectively supports the NHS and provides economic value to the UK. As Council budgets get squeezed, it is almost inevitable that statutory services such a social care for children and adults, and support for the NHS will increasingly be prioritised over other public services. This situation is not the fault of local councils. For many years now, successive governments have been obsessively concerned with hospital care, and this will also have impacted upon resources for social care. Adult social care services are now facing a funding gap of some £3.6 billion by 2025.  

Like those involved in the climate change arguments, how to effectively fund future social care has become politicised, with little agreement on the way forward evident. The current government have even postponed the publication of their Green Paper on this issue. Just like the climate change situation, we cannot simply wait for solutions, we must try and find them and do so collectively. Much more can be done to promote better health and well-being and reduce the care burden. The LGA Green Paper presents many stories of what is possible if the collective will is there. There may be hard choices to make, which is why being part of the LGA consultation is important. 

Yesterday morning, at 10.52, Joshua David Warne was born. He is doing well, and he is my 11^th grandchild. I want to see a world where he can grow up in that has both a safe and secure environment for him to enjoy and world where should he need care as a child or an adult he will get that. Both the safe guarding the physical and social worlds will be critical in allowing him to reach his full potential and lead the life he might want to choose to live.