The Citizens’ Assembly for Northern Ireland was set the task to:

• Explore aspirations for social care for older people, including the role the health service, communities and individuals need to play.
• Develop useful, realistic recommendations for delivering a sustainable, fit-for-purpose social care system for older people, future-proofed to cope with the needs of the next generations (within the context of finite resources).

The Citizens’ Assembly for Northern Ireland met for 2 weekends in October / November 2018 to learn, discuss and deliberate on these questions.

A list of the resolutions and recommendations passed by the members of the Citizens’ Assembly for Northern Ireland were published on 18 November, immediately after close of the second weekend. A new interim report sets out to provide some further context to these by drawing on the broad themes of the discussions between members over the weekends, particularly the small group-work that identified the topic areas for recommendations.

Click here to read the report.

A full report, containing a more detailed analysis of the content of the discussions and more evidence of why members of the Citizens’ Assembly for Northern Ireland supported key recommendations, will be published in early 2019.