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As new legislation comes into law providing carers with six days unpaid leave per year, it feels timely to say we need to stop tinkering around the edges of care. We need to be bold and develop a welfare state that meets the needs of the 21st century.

When the welfare state was built on the back of Beveridge’s 1942 report, the hope was that it would rid the UK of the five ‘Giants’ (want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness). To think that that want, disease and squalor would still be things that people were battling almost a century later is incredible. The welfare state has remained fundamentally the same for almost a hundred years, despite huge shifts in population, population health and the makeup of society; whilst at the same time, less and less funding was invested into it.

When the welfare state was created (including the National Health Service) it was based on a model of society that is barely recognisable to the one that exists today. We still had multi-generational households; a much smaller older population and one that did not live as long as we do now; extended families still based relatively close to one another, and very few women going out to work full-time. The introduction of the welfare state transformed the UK, especially the lives of those most poor and experiencing challenges. However, that system was not designed to anticipate the challenges and social structure of the 21st century.  

I reflected on this whilst reading Emily Kenway’s beautiful book Who Cares about her own experiences supporting her mother, who was living with cancer and at the end of her life. My reading coincided with the publication of the CLES and Women’s Budget Group report: Women’s Work, as well as the airing of a documentary (Derek’s Story) about Kate Garraway and her husband Derek’s experience of coping with a complex health condition. 

One of the people spoken to by Emily referred to themself as an “opportunity creator” for the person they supported. I like this phrase; it resonates with mine and my sister’s approach. But, it made me think: imagine if our economy and our society took this approach, creating opportunities for us all to live good lives?

The distance between Beveridge’s 1940s and our present day society is that we are now surrounded by care, but also that the system (our welfare state, our public services) that were designed to help us are woefully inadequate to cope with that 21st century society’s assorted challenges. This goes beyond a need to fix social care, and beyond a need to fund social care. We have to fundamentally redesign those systems and services that were built to support us to be full of care. The three examples I’ve just given, particularly Kenway’s book, show that the world now does not enable us to care for ourselves – let alone one another – without reaching breaking point. 

If we explore the issue with focussing on social care as opposed to more widely on public services as a whole, alongside our economic model and our societal structures, we’ll see why the challenges we face can’t be addressed solely in that space.

How we talk about social care has been very much as a place for ‘others’; that is how we present it, but also its original purpose situates it away from the majority of people and therefore easy to dismiss: ‘not my business’. To make this more personal it takes up a heck of a lot of time: navigating, chasing, understanding the system and getting help to do what you need. Plus, if you have an emergency – need to go to hospital for example – social care isn’t going to help with that. My sister and I operate as a team: phoning, emailing, jumping on trains at short notice… you get the idea.

Social care doesn’t solve the need for days off so appointments can be managed. It doesn’t sort out burnout, unsympathetic bosses, hospital appointments scheduled at the same time or locations impossible to get to without a car; you get the idea.

Beveridge created a revelatory system that was focused on the challenges of the time. That is why we need to stop tweaking the edges of our system. We need to be bold like Beveridge, and the 1945 Labour Government that implemented his proposal. We must present a new economic, societal and public service model to respond to our 21st century ‘giants’.

Some of the foundations of this new society are already out there: Four Day Weeks, 

Universal Basic Income, Universal Basic Services. Examples like these could be implemented swiftly, and have a positive impact for all of us, not just those connected to care. They could help to form a new economic model that moves away from our GDP-obsessed model towards one that centres our wellbeing.

But fundamentally, we must all recognise that care will touch our lives. We must start to push for a better society that will create opportunities for us, so that we can care for ourselves, one another and the planet.

Ruth Hannan