Minister of State for Care and Mental Health, Gillian Keegan MP, left delegates unconvinced by government plans at the King’s Fund’s Future of Care conference on 29 March.
To her credit, Keegan did seem well-appraised of the issues facing social care and was frank regarding the hurdles that needed to be overcome. Workforce recruitment and retention was a key issue, she recognised, acknowledging that there are “always 100,000 vacancies” in social care, and she reiterated the government’s commitment to funding and reform, even if she did say that “I don’t pretend that the additional £5.4 billion is enough to fix all the underlying problems in social care, but it’s a big step forward”. The minister also echoed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Sajid Javid’s speech to Care England’s Facing the Future event on 23 March when she spoke about the importance of digitalisation, calling digital “a game changer”, and pointing out that many tech solutions are available right now.
However, Professor Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, sounded a far more cautionary note in his speech directly afterwards, pointing out that while “we know where we are and where we need to get to” there is nevertheless “no road map” for how the sector can successfully make the journey from one to the other. As Professor Green said: “we shouldn’t underestimate how far we have to go”. When asked what he thought the first milestone on such a road map ought to be, Professor Green said that an agreed “integrated measure of success” would be a start. He also expressed scepticism regarding the potential benefit of government’s Health and Social Care Levy and the proportion of funds that would be allocated to social care rather than health, pointing out that the NHS would be prioritised for the first three years, and that it was likely that political pressures (particularly during an election year in 2024) would mean that the higher-profile NHS might well continue to take the lion’s share of any additional funds.
