Contents Why did the Welsh Labour ‘ Free Home

This paper outlines the prominence of home care for disabled people in the UK and Wales before introducing the debate surrounding paying for such services. It will then give an overview of policy developments in this area since 1997, including the Royal Commission on Long Term Care (Sutherland, 1999), the introduction of free personal care in Scotland following devolution, in 2001 and the failure of the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) to introduce free home care for disabled people following their 2003 election pledge to introduce such a policy. The research used semi-structured elite interviews with eight elites and one service user. Interviewees’ accounts were verified by the use of official documents. It will be suggested that the major factor to have influenced the failure of the policy in Wales was resources. Two other contributory factors were found: firstly, constraints upon the WAG by Local Authorities and the Department of Work and Pensions alongside weak campaigns by the disability rights sector; secondly that there was a change of priorities by the WAG. The article ends with three areas of questioning; should home care be free for all? Did a similar policy succeed in Scotland? And what is the political price of failure? It will be concluded that without the backing of Whitehall, FHC was unlikely to succeed.