Social care reform ‘will fail without public consent’
A “challenging conversation” with the public about the hard choices involved is needed before attempting major reform of adult social care, Baroness Louise Casey has warned.
Speaking at the LGA’s annual conference in Bournemouth, the Chair of the Independent Commission on Adult Social Care said England does not have a functioning system of adult social care.
And she described the social care precept on council tax as a “stealth tax”.
Baroness Casey told delegates the commission would launch a national public conversation this summer, warning that previous attempts at reform have failed because they have tried to push through big changes without securing public consent for the tough choices involved.
“Everyone remembers the death tax and the dementia tax,” she said, calling instead for “a designed system that puts the adult who needs social care at its centre”.
The current system is a “patched together set of arrangements” involving councils, the NHS, the benefits system, the private sector, charities, and an estimated five million members of the public who are unpaid carers – with the onus falling on them to navigate their way through it, she added.
The NHS is the “dominant partner by a country mile”, and “politically protected and financially dominant”, but we “cannot build a National Care Service that sits apart from the National Health Service”, Baroness Casey told delegates.
While many councils welcomed the Care Act 2014, many can’t meet their full responsibilities because the money, infrastructure, systems and reform needed to make it work “weren’t put in place”, she added.
Consequently, the social care precept was introduced in 2016, with social care relying on local authorities to raise council tax for a service that is “poorly understood and hidden from most taxpayers’ view”.
“Councils are left trying to manage national problems with local tools and dwindling resources,” she added.