Lords committee challenges government to urgently reform adult social care

According to the Adult Social Care Committee’s report A gloriously ordinary life: spotlight on adult social care, this lack of visibility is proving to be increasingly damaging both to those who draw on care and those who provide unpaid care at a time of increasing need, rising costs, and a shrinking workforce.

Having heard from witnesses including disabled adults and older people, carers, service providers, local authorities, and academics, the committee has set out a new approach to adult social care, calling 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. To achieve this, the government must:

• deliver realistic, predictable, long-term funding;
• deliver a plan for a highly valued workforce, building skills and remedying low pay;
• establish a powerful commissioner for care and support;
• implement the principles of the Care Act 2014, rooted in wellbeing, choice, and control;
• ensure that the voice of social care is loud and clear within Integrated Care Systems;
• recognise that more people will be ageing without children;
• invest in better knowledge and data to inform better policy;
• provide accessible housing and assistive technology to achieve independent living;
• working with social care staff to promote the skills to co-produce care;
• enabling people to determine who supports them, and what relationship they want with their family and friend.

Baroness Andrews, committee chair, said: “In this report we have revealed the impact that the invisibility of the adult social care sector as a whole has on the way we perceive and provide for adult social care. Our recommendations are intended to bring those who draw on and provide unpaid care into the daylight and that starts with changing the perceptions around care, providing the realistic financial and workforce strategies that are long overdue, and planning for a system responsive to present needs and resilient for the future.

“All that will help the unpaid carer now so often at risk of poverty and ill health with a better future.  But we want a better present for them too – and our specific recommendations for their support will deliver that.”