WE are about to experience the deepest cuts to social care since the welfare state was created.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services reports that in the three years to March 2014, social care’s funding budget will have been cut by 20 per cent. By 2018 if the further cuts envisaged take place then this will have grown to 50 per cent.

Social care supports us when we are at our most vulnerable. It has to cope with increasingly complex needs, particularly supporting older people with dementia and young people with multiple needs who now survive into adulthood.

The system cannot cope with the scale of the money being cut from it, nor the increasing demands on its services. It is the perfect storm.

The county council has published a Future Lives questionnaire and would like members of the public to vote for those care services that they would like to cut first.

In case the public does not have the taste for this then the questionnaire implies that disabled vulnerable adults can use their own resources, the kindness of friends and neighbours, voluntary groups and charities.

These may be very localised, inconsistent, or unreliable.

MRS V BOUGHTON Malvern