Last Updated on November 4, 2022

The National Children and Adult Social Care Conference (NCASC) took place this week and The Association of Directors of Adult Social Care Services (ADASS) President, Sarah McClinton, delivered a speech to delegates.

Sarah McClinton, who holds the position of the Director for Health and Adult Services in Greenwich and this year’s ADASS President, told delegates that she was feeling just as ‘angry’ and ‘frustrated’ now, as she was six months ago – making reference to Westminster, she said, ‘Ideally, we would have politicians with a long-term outlook for all of us who need, or might need care and support, for system reform that  promotes social justice, tackles inequalities and a commitment to funding.’ Reflecting on what this future should look like, delegates heard McClinton cite Social Care Future’s vision for social care:

‘Don’t we all want to live in the place we call home, with the people and things that we love, in communities where we look after one another, doing what matters to us?’

The ADASS President said the sector must continue to focus on people and it is the people who need care and support, unpaid carers, our friends, our relatives, and people who work in care who are most exposed. Sarah McClinton told delegates: ‘Be under no illusion, things have never been so bad.’

In July, ADASS published its Spring Survey, which shows that the long-term impact of both austerity and the COVID-19 pandemic on support for people with care needs is now being compounded by spiralling inflation and intense labour market pressures. Sarah McClinton said that Austerity; Brexit and leaving the single market; the devastating impact of COVID-19 and now a growing cost of living crisis – a crisis affecting us all, are all disproportionately affecting people who draw on care and support and the people who work in care.

Conference delegates heard that more people are requesting help from Councils, older and disabled people with complex needs, yet social care capacity has reduced, and there are 50,000 fewer paid carers. The ADASS surveys show there are over half a million people waiting for care, waiting to be assessed, waiting for care to be arranged or waiting for their reviews to happen. Commenting on the unmet need, Sarah McClinton said, ‘The scale of how many people either not getting the care and support they need, or are getting the wrong kind of help, at the wrong time and in the wrong place is staggering.’

Also, more people are requesting help with mental health and domestic abuse, 2.2 million hours of homecare couldn’t be delivered in the first quarter of this year. Plus, ADASS said unpaid carers are at breaking point and people are unable to afford the support they need.

ADASS called for an immediate injection of funding to Councils in July, so the sector could plan for this winter. In September, Therese Coffey’s ‘Plan for Patients’ announced £500m for social care to help people get out of hospital – yet this has been described by directors as merely ‘coffee money’ and a ‘sticking plaster.’

The ADASS President praised colleagues who have continued to work hard at pace and highlighted the uncertainty of the social care cap – noting that there is good reason for the delay but what we need to do is to ‘resolve who is paying for care’ and given the scale of the challenge, we need ‘long-term plans with long term investment.’

Sarah McClinton said we need a plan that:

• Makes the vocation of care attractive, ensuring that carers are not forced into hard life choices.
• Supports unpaid carers.
• A plan to help people recover and get back on their feet.
• A plan that provides more support at home and in our communities. Particularly communities that were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, where we know inequalities have widened.
• A long-term workforce plan that would set out the roles we need for the future.
• A plan for the 480,000 more carers we will need as a country by 2035.
• A plan that would include building more of the kind of new housing and support that people like ‘Tom’, who has a learning disability, gets at the Charlie Ratchford Court intergenerational scheme run by Camden Council.

ADASS has been campaigning for parity of pay for care staff and Sarah McClinton cited the positive work being done by Leeds Council in supporting the workforce.

Concluding, Sarah McClinton, said, ‘We need the future to be different, we can’t have more of the same and we know what can work. As winter approaches, we need that Coffey money urgently. Successive governments of all political shades have promised to reform social care to make it genuinely fit for the 21st century. None have, so far, delivered on that promise.

‘Adult social care cannot be an afterthought. At its very best it helps people to live active lives, to contribute, to work, to train, to volunteer, to have a safe home, to live free from abuse. It’s an opportunity – an opportunity to help people to build independence, an opportunity to support inter-dependency in our communities. We know how it can be, and how it can change lives.’

‘How we look after each other says a lot about us as a society: we all owe it to each other to get it right.’

Visit the ADASS website to read the conference speech in full.

In other news, the Government must build 50,000 new homes for older people each year to tackle the UK’s housing and social care crisis – one in four of all new homes – a new report published today has urged.