Agenda item

This Council wishes to pay tribute to the extraordinary work and dedication during the Covid-19 pandemic of all care workers and unpaid carers delivering Social Care, which servesas such a lifeline to children and adults at risk.

The Council notes with concern the severe staffing pressures now emerging within Social Care exacerbating long-standing demographic pressures, and compounded by long-delayed reform of the social care sector.

The Council welcomes the Welsh Government’s recent commitment of immediate additional funding of £40M to support Local Authorities’ delivery of Social Care, and further welcomes the Welsh Government’s commitment to paying the Real Living Wage to all Social Care workers during this Senedd term.

However, this Council notes with alarm the recent announcement from the UK Government on Social Care which –

• Introduces an unfair increase in National Insurance contributions which will disproportionately impact the poorest in society;

• Provides no immediate new funding for the Social Care sector which has been decimated by over a decade of austerity; and

• Proposes no plans to reform Social Care to address the immediate looming crisis, nor the long term structural issues faced.

The Council further notes that the increase in NI contributions – the biggest tax increase for families in 50 years – will come shortly after a cut to Universal Credit that will impact 31,000 households in Cardiff.

In response, this Council resolves –

• that Cardiff should seek to be a pilot area for introducing the Real Living Wage, and requests that Cabinet bring forward a report detailing the practical implications of how this could be implemented in conjunction with the support and funding of Welsh Government;

• that there can be no further delay in reforming and properly funding social care, and therefore requests that the Cabinet Member for Social Care, Health and Wellbeing writes to the Deputy Minister for Social Care, urging the Welsh Government – in the absence of any plan by the UK Government – to bring forward its own plans for reform, giving parity of esteem between social care workers and those in health, and putting in place sustainable long-term funding;

• that the UK Government’s iniquitous proposals to increase NI contributions and cut Universal Credit will hit the poorest members of society hardest, and devastate thousands of hard-working families in Cardiff, and request that the Leader writes to the Prime Minister urging his Government to rethink their proposals.

Proposed by Councillor Lee Bridgeman

Seconded by Councillor Susan Elsmore