Last Updated on July 9, 2026

In a major speech on Tuesday, Baroness Casey of Blackstock announced plans to launch a national public social care conversation. Speaking at the Local Government Association's (LGA's) annual conference, Baroness Casey warned that we must resist the temptation to attempt major reform of adult social care without first having an honest debate with the public about the hard choices involved.

Baroness Casey's speech also set out how England does not currently have a functioning 'system' of adult social care, but instead a patchwork of services that has evolved over decades without a clear plan or public mandate. Drawing on evidence gathered by the Casey Commission over the past year, she described a country under mounting strain from an ageing population, rising levels of disability, a withdrawing health service and increasing demand from working-age disabled adults, alongside fewer older people receiving support.

She argued that previous attempts at reform have failed because they have either tinkered with parts of the system or tried to push through bigger changes without securing public consent for the tough choices involved. She will warn that continuing down this path risks repeating a cycle of review, delay and crisis. Baroness Casey instead set out her plans to have an honest, tough conversation with the public about what social care is for, who it should support and what people should expect from the state and contribute in return.

In her speech, Baroness Casey said, 'We cannot keep pretending that a few tweaks will fix adult social care or attempt major reform without the public's backing. That means having a proper conversation with the public about who social care is for, what the state should provide, what families can reasonably be expected to do and what we should all contribute in return. Without that honest conversation with the nation about the difficult choices involved, we will be back here again and again.'

The Casey Commission will launch a national conversation with the public later this summer. It will engage with hundreds of thousands of people across the country through bringing together representative groups of the public, letting people have their say online and speaking directly to people who get care and support. The speech builds on Baroness Casey's earlier call for a 'reckoning' on adult social care and comes ahead of the Commission's phase one report which will be published later this year.

Commenting on the announcement, Kari Gerstheimer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Access Social Care, said, 'Baroness Louise Casey and her formidable team are delivering high quality work in line with a timetable set by the outgoing leadership. But they have been working against a timetable that was set for the convenience of the public finances rather than to address the urgency of the need for social care reform.

'Andy Burnham has made no secret of his views on social care. People who draw on social care, carers and the millions of us who work in social care are awaiting the 20th July, the date of the King of the North's expected coronation, to see whether amongst all of the issues vying for attention, social care emerges as one of the policies our new Prime Minister is willing to stake his reputation and measure his success against.

'The odds are stacked against it. Successive governments and leaders of all stripes have put social care in the "too hard to solve" box. A toxic political football, kicked into the long grass for fear of an own goal. Yet, the news that Baroness Casey has already been speaking to Mr Burnham gives us hope. We are hoping for a swift national conversation: Those of us who have been working in social care for decades could easily predict the outcome of the national conversation.

'Past public consultations and deliberative events have told us what we need to know; the public want increased access to social care and higher quality support. We don't want a roll of the dice when it comes to paying for social care - we don't want to lose our homes to pay for care, we want risk pooling and we are prepared to pay more for a guarantee of access and quality care.

'We are hoping for fairness - the LGA is right to say council tax is not working - it can't be right that we are all paying more council tax and yet the paltry percentage of us qualifying for state funded care reduces each year. It can't be right that one in ten of us faces catastrophic care costs because we are unlucky enough to have dementia rather than cancer. It can't be right that those who pay for their own care are subsidising the cost of people who are state funded because fees from cash strapped councils have not kept up with inflation, employers national insurance costs and increases to the minimum wage.

'We are hoping for a leader who is bold, who can use the significant Parliamentary majority in this Parliament to take us a big stride forwards towards a universal national care service that is there for us when we need it.'

Damian Green, Chair of the Social Care Foundation and former First Secretary of State, said, 'A national conversation about the future of social care is long overdue, so this is very welcome. That conversation must be realistic, and must address the difficult issues of where the extra money needed is coming from, how social care can escape from being seen as an add-on to the NHS and what are the different roles of national and local government in a National Care Service. The voices of users, carers and care providers must be heard in this conversation.'

Baroness Casey's speech has been published on the LGA website.

In other news, a new report on the experiences of people with a learning disability or autism diagnosis in long-term segregation (LTS) has been published.