This pre-Green Paper roundtable drew together voices from carers’, disability rights and service user movements in order to explore and subsequently publicise shared positions on some of the key questions about care and support currently faced by families, including the significance of the independent living agenda. Policy recommendations and a list of those endorsing them can be found at the end of this report.

There was wide agreement that the carers’ movement and disability rights and service user movements have very similar goals and that, often, we get stuck upon words. There was recognition that the carers and the families whom we represent wish us to be bolder and more unified, and desire a simpler, shared language with which to talk about the goals of independence, choice and control, and about the services that help to achieve these goals. The current level of resourcing of the care and support system limits the lives of both users of services being perceived as a disability debate or a carers’ debate, to one that is seen as central to all of our lives. One participant commented: “care is not just a private matter, but a public concern”.

There was consistency on the need to move beyond the aspiration for the care and support system to get better and fairer at doing what it does now, towards building services that create the conditions in which all people,
including those who give or receive care or support, can live ordinary lives as active citizens.