Amanda Kopel will find out the Scottish Government plans for Frank’s Law before next year’s Holyrood election, the health secretary has pledged.
Shona Robison confirmed ministers would outline what they felt it was going to be possible to do on the “priority” issue ahead of Holyrood dissolving for the vote in May.
Amanda has been campaigning on personal care since her husband, Dundee United legend Frank, died in April last year having been diagnosed with dementia in 2009, aged just 59.
The couple paid around £300 a week so he could have personal care in his Kirriemuir home because he did not reach the qualifying age for free services until weeks before his death. The Courier has backed Mrs Kopel in her campaign.
At Holyrood’s Public Petitions Committee, Ms Robison said ministers were “working out precisely what the best options are to make the system of charging for social care fairer”.
She told MSPs: “What we need to do is come up with the fairest one, the best one, the most sustainable one and of course we have to get agreement from local government…”
The Dundee City East MSP said detailed work was under way to examine how the system could be changed but no decision could be reached until Chancellor George Osborne sets out financial settlements in the Autumn Statement.
Mrs Kopel, who was in the public gallery for the session, welcomed the promise for an answer on her campaign to finally be delivered.
She said: “I wasn’t disappointed with what I was hearing because it was nothing new but we will wait and see.
“At the meeting with Shona at the protest she definitely said nothing will be resolved until after May. She has changed the goalposts and that’s a positive step.”