Social care – what does the future look like?

Pete Jackson is a longstanding Telford Live! contributor. He recently became the first Telford Constituent to meet new MP Shaun Davies at one of his new surgeries.

Pete explains why he went and what he thought of the response.

In 2016, when my mum moved to Dawley and started needing home care, I wrote to my MP to highlight the state of social care in England and ask for her assistance.

Over the next 8 years, I wrote to her 23 times, asking her to promote the great work being done in Telford to support older people and people with learning disabilities. While Lucy Allan MP replied to every letter, she never raised the issues I brought up, either in Parliament or in the local press.

I was therefore pleased to meet with my new MP, Shaun Davies, last week and ask for his support in shaping and influencing the proposed National Care Service outlined in the Labour manifesto.

I was even happier to receive a letter from Shaun, offering his full support for my suggestion to establish the Telford Care Collaborative. This initiative would bring together various parts of the social care system to plan how a National Care Service might look in Telford, with the idea of sharing our work locally, regionally, and nationally.

Politics can be off putting and gets a bad press but I think we have to get better at working together and celebrating the good things about our town and working with our politicians to make it even better.

Everyday I see people on Telford Live! sharing good deeds as well as humorously pointing out some of the short comings. I would love to see if we could do something in Telford about social care which I think we have all the ingredients in our town to make a success.

I’d love to hear from people locally who might be interested in getting involved.

Pic: Pete Jackson & Shaun Davies MP