Social Care Charging Measure

Age Cymru welcomes today's announcement from the Welsh Assembly Government of a Wales-wide maximum weekly charge for people who receive care services at home from 11 April 2011.

Through our membership of the Coalition on Charging Cymru over the last decade, Age Cymru has campaigned for an end to the postcode lottery of differing charges for care services, various assessment procedures for those services and appeals mechanisms across Wales.

We have strongly argued the case for changing a regime that has seen people receiving similar amounts of care have been paying vastly different fees just because of where they live.

With this in mind, Age Cymru is pleased that the Welsh Assembly Government has today recognised the unfairness and inconsistency of the home care charging regime with this announcement.  The changes being made from April will mean that some people with high care needs in Wales should now save thousands of pounds in charges each year.

However Age Cymru still believes that the Welsh Assembly Government can go even further to help the most vulnerable people in Wales today by removing these unfair and discriminatory charges altogether.