People in Conwy, North Wales, have been signing an online petition to 10 Downing Street to protest at the proposed introduction in June of a £3.50 a week charge for the council’s telecare service, which is currently free. However, the bulk of Conwy’s funding from government comes via the Welsh Assembly. Telecare for Free petition.
5 thoughts on “Free telecare petition online (Wales)”
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This is embarrassing! Only 15 people have signed it – and I’ll bet that they don’t know what it’s about. It doesn’t help the cause of technology for people to put so little value on services. If they had asked for telecare services to be VAT-free (in the same way as domiciliary care services are) then it would have made some sense.
We don’t know how long the petition has been going and the numbers may increase. It will be interesting to see. Apart from letting off steam, it’s a pretty pointless exercise as it would have no effect even if 15,000 people signed it. But it does show that the matter of charging does rouse strong feelings in some people.
Telecare saves lives in Conwy and the rest of North Wales, it has always been a charged service, to me £3.50 a week is a cheap labour hourly rate for someone to be available day or night 24 hrs £0.02p per hour. My life is worth that! The money goes back into the service there is no money from anywhere else get your facts right. If you got it free for a while you were lucky!
Jo, perhaps the good people of Conwy understand that some previously free services now have to be paid for and that £3.50 per week is well worth it
Dave. I hope that they (and others elsewhere in the UK) understand that £3.50, or even double this price, is good value for money. Wales may not yet have Personal Budgets, but England and Scotland already do. We need to understand both the cost and the value of new methods of support.