The first such deliberative body to be commissioned and run by Parliament, the randomly selected 47-member Citizens' Assembly met over three weekends to learn about, deliberate, and advise on funding strategies and priorities. The CA’s conclusions helped inform the Parliamentary report.
Problems and Purpose
The Citizens’ Assembly on Social Care brought together a representative group of 47 randomly selected English citizens over two weekends to consider the question of how adult social care in England should be funded in the long term.
Background History and Context
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
The Health and Social Care Committee and the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee of the House of Commons jointly commissioned the assembly.
Participant Recruitment and Selection
Methods and Tools Used
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
The Citizens’ Assembly on Social Care worked through a three-step process of learning, deliberation and decision-making. Through a series of group deliberations, followed by individual votes, Assembly Members developed a set of conclusions and recommendations on: how adult social care should be funded, and how any decision should be taken. The recommendations were fed into the joint inquiry of the Health and Social Care Committee and the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee of the House of Commons (who jointly commissioned the assembly).
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
The Assembly’s recommendations were written up by the organisers, Involve, into a report and fed into the joint inquiry by the Health and Social Care Select Committee and the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee. The Select Committees’ Members considered them, alongside other evidence submitted to the inquiry, when deciding on their own recommendations for how adult social care should be funded. The Assembly’s findings are also published separately on the Committees’ website. According to Select committee Chairs, Clive Betts MP and Sarah Wollaston MP , "our published report and recommendations were informed by their conclusions… Following the recommendation from the Assembly that a greater proportion of people’s savings and assets should be protected, and very high care costs should be capped, we also concluded that the pooling of risk is a vital consideration in the design of any new system. It is now up to the government to respond, and we hope it will accept our proposals when it comes forward - any day now - with its Green Paper."
Analysis and Lessons Learned
See Also
References
External Links
Notes
This entry is based on the POLITICIZE dataset. More information can be found at the following links:
- Paulis, Emilien; Pilet, Jean-Benoit; Panel, Sophie; Vittori, Davide; Close, Caroline, 2020, "POLITICIZE Dataset", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/Z7X6GT, Harvard Dataverse, V1
- Pilet J-B, Paulis E, Panel S.,Vitori D & Close C. 202X The POLITICIZE Dataset: an inventory of Deliberative Mini-Publics (DMPs) in Europe. European Political Science.