Ensuring Edinburgh and its residents are well cared for

Its budget-week at the Council, and as mentioned a few days ago, Edinburgh's Capital Coalition has six main themes running-through its 53-pledges: you can see all the detail of those pledges here, along with a commentary on how delivery is progressing.

One of the main themes is to ensure that Edinburgh and its residents are well cared for - and this week's upcoming Council Budget, for 2013/14, has several commitments to help do just that.

The detail is within the main motion, but here are the key points:

• Investment of £4 million in building a 60 bed care home in the north of the city - its important to remember that care homes are not the only solution but are part of it. Long term aim is for people to live independently in their own homes, in their communities.
• To that end, an additional investment of £2 million to provide care for an increasing number of older people to support them in their own homes - we are faced with an ageing population and this brings major challenges in providing the right care for older people. But this type of investment will help us meet that.
• Additional investment of £2.9 million to meet the needs of people with physical and learning disabilities - demand for health/social care services is rising as people are living longer with long term conditions due to better health provision.
•  Investment of £500,000 to support carers - we recently appointed a Carers' Champion; hopefully providing further evidence that the Capital Coalition is fully commited to supporting carers.
• We're investing £112k in Garden Aid to reduce the qualifying age from 80 to 75 years - this will help ensure that more vulnerable residents are supported in their communities

As mentioned in earlier posts, all of this - and much more - will now be debated/decided at the special Council Meeting at 10am this Thursday, 7th February, when the final 2013/14 Council Budget will be approved.

You can watch the whole meeting here.