HEALTH workers and campaigners are calling for a national care service to replace the chaotic privatised system.

Eleven national and local organisations have united behind the demand for a publicly owned and run national care, support and independent living service to care for Britain’s most vulnerable.

The service would end the current profit-driven private care system which has seen tens of thousands of care workers quit and which saw vulnerable care home residents ravaged by the spread of Covid-19 almost two years ago.

The campaign includes national groups Keep Our NHS Public, Doctors in Unite, the National Pensioners Convention and the Socialist Health Association, plus local and regional bodies such as Greater Manchester Association of Trade Union Councils and Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign.

They say the new system would “eradicate private profit, remove instability for service users and dramatically improve the quality of service delivered.”

The service would be free at the point of need, a founding principle of the NHS in 1948.

Gilda Peterson of Keep Our NHS Public said: “The pandemic exposed a casual disregard for the welfare of older and disabled people which extends to the underpaid and undervalued staff, who do their best to support them.”

She said the new system “needs to be not just universal, publicly provided and funded like the NHS but must have people who use services at the heart of designing the kind of support and inclusive societies which will benefit us all.”