At the end of 2022, the House of Lords Adult Social Care Committee published a report, challenging the Government to implement urgent reforms in the sector.
Entitled, ‘A Gloriously Ordinary Life’: Spotlight on Adult Social Care, the report warned that the ‘continued invisibility’ of the adult social care sector was increasingly damaging to both those who draw on care and who provide unpaid care at a time of increasing need, rising costs and a shrinking workforce.
The issue of demand, funding, and a dwindling labour market, are not unique to adult social care, with the care sector as a whole struggling to keep up on all fronts. The call for reforms is also a familiar tune being played out across every sub-sector, with the industry united in calling for greater Government support. However, this one has political weight, in the form of a House of Lords committee.
As the committee said themselves: “After hearing from a range of witnesses, including disabled adults and older people, carers, service providers, local authorities, and academics, the report sets out a new approach to adult social care which calls on the Government to commit to a more positive and resilient approach to adult social care based on greater visibility for the whole sector, as well as greater choice and control for disabled adults and older people and a better deal for unpaid carers.”
The committee set out clear recommendations to ‘make adult care a national imperative’, by:
- Delivering realistic, predictable and long-term funding
- Delivering a properly resourced plan for supporting a highly valued workforce, building skills and remedying low pay
- Establishing a powerful Commissioner for Care and Support to strengthen the voice and identity of the sector
- Finally and fully implementing the principles of the Care Act 2014, rooted in wellbeing, choice, and control
- Ensuring that the voice of social care is loud and clear within Integrated Care Systems.
Four months on, the committee has published a call for evidence, asking the public their views on what needs to change to create ‘a fair, resilient and sustainable care system that better enables everyone to ‘live an ordinary life’ and, in so doing, to have greater choice and control over their lives’.
We took to social media to gain our own insight into where the answers lie and what the sector would like to see in order to meet the objectives of the report. Mirroring the committee’s first recommendation, 49% of respondents said greater funding was needed. This was followed by more collaboration and a stronger focus on skills and recruitment (29% each). The consistency in messaging between those on the ground and those attempting to drive reform in the House of Lords is clear – more money, a clearer voice, and a stronger workforce.
At Tristone Healthcare, our business community is bursting with passionate and committed adult social care providers – people who are strong and dedicated advocates of the vulnerable adults in their care. Here’s what they had to say on the committee’s recommendations, and what the Government needs to do in order to improve the outcomes of everyone within the sector.
Doreen Kelly, founder and director of Beyond Limits, says:
“Everything in the committee’s report is spot on and you’d be hard pushed to find anyone who would argue with it. Unfortunately, it’s one in a long list of similar publications that are seeking to do things differently. The issue is not what is being said and the recommendations being made, but how we as a sector react, respond, and interpret the raft of guidance, protocols and legislation already in place.
“While there is fantastic work happening every single day to achieve excellent outcomes for people, there is a real need for the sector to modernise its thinking. We need to move away from the mentality of ‘them and us’ and start to think about how we would design adult social care services if we were doing it for ourselves – it would be entirely different. Fundamentally, more focus needs to put on people’s human rights and the simple requirements of providing individuals with their own home, a family life, and the power to manage their own personal budgets and choose their own ‘gloriously ordinary life’.
“As time goes on, care will become more and more important and the last three years have highlighted that. Therefore, we need to get into a position where we’re doing things in the right way; we need to start seeing people with disabilities in exactly the same way as we see everyone else. Reports such as this, as well as the Care Act, allow us to deliver the services, we just need to adjust our thinking. At the end of the day, it all boils down to attitude and opinions.”
Dr Kirsten Bond, found of Next Steps, comments:
“It’s a very big question to answer. However, from my perspective, the real issue is a lack of provision across all social care organisations and mental health services, which are clearly not fit for purpose.
“There is a common understanding that the current provision of adult social care services is not sufficient, is not delivered in the way that it should be, and is severely underfunded. At the moment, services are funded to meet very basic care and people are simply not basic creatures.
“There’s an increasing emphasis on personalised care, but basic and personalised care are just not compatible. Personalised care needs more funding, better skills, more resources, and greater understanding, with more flexibility needed around bureaucratic regulations. When the purse strings catch up with the ideas, and they are properly funded, then we will start to see progress.
“The other important issue to consider is skills and recruitment. As a sector, we are just about competing with the likes of Aldi, in terms of pay. This makes recruitment considerably harder as the role is highly intensive from an emotional perspective, compared to a purely task-driven job. The one thing that I would say is that, despite those pressures, people who choose to stay in social care are really quite beautiful human beings. They are fundamentally kind, they strive to do a good job, and they get something out of helping vulnerable people in need. However, I don’t believe they are justly rewarded for their efforts.”
