“Easing” Duties and Making Dignity Difficult: COVID-19 and the Care Act 2014

Abstract

As with so many other aspects of life, the impact of the Coronavirus on social care has been devastating. Social care is a system, providing daily living assistance to disabled and elderly people in residential and domiciliary contexts, that was already over-stretched and struggling to secure the dignity of its users in a context of increasing need. Its funding settlement has been very much debated, but was still unresolved following the last general election. Put bluntly, a pandemic was the last thing that social care needed.