20/04/2026
Please sign it. Share it.
Most people on this page already know what good care looks like. You see it when you visit. You see it in how our team knows your mum's favourite food, your dad's routine, the small things that matter to the person you love.
What you might not know is how the system behind it all actually works – and how unfair it is.
Many councils pay care homes less than it actually costs to look after someone. The fees don't cover the wages, the heating, the food, the skilled team members needed to keep your family member safe and well. Providers who deliver care to predominantly council-funded residents are either absorbing the loss, charging their self-funders more to plug the gap, or will eventually close.
Care homes are closing across the country, every month. Not because they don't care – because the funding doesn't work. When a home closes, the people who live there, elderly, vulnerable, some living with dementia, get moved. Sometimes miles from their families.
For many residents and families paying for care privately, you may well be paying more so the home can afford to look after others whose care the council won't properly fund. Your savings, your parents' savings, the house they worked a lifetime to pay off – quietly subsidising a system that isn't funding itself.
There's a government petition asking for a fair national tariff – a transparent price for care that reflects what it actually costs to deliver. It needs 100,000 signatures to be debated in Parliament.
Seven days after its launch, it has around 350.
To put that in perspective, a petition to save a baked potato seller's pitch in Tamworth gathered 60,000 signatures in two days. That sounds too unbelievable to be true, so here's the BBC story: www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyny7jdx29o
We're not comparing causes. We're saying that when the public cares about something, they act. Social care hasn't found its way into that conversation yet – and it needs to.
You don't need to work in care to sign this. You don't need to have a loved one who depends on it. You just need to believe that good care should be available to anyone who needs it.
Sign it. Share it with your family and friends – especially those who aren't thinking about social care yet. They will be, one day.
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/764031
Introduce transparent national social care tariffs so councils pay the true cost of care, ending the hidden shifting of costs onto private households and care providers when local authority fees fall below the cost of delivering safe services.
