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Social care’s status in the Department of Health is now being raised after many years of marginalisation, the care services minister told delegates at the National Adult and Children’s Services conference in Brighton today.

Ivan Lewis said that the appointment of David Behan as director general of social care was a step towards giving social care the status it deserved in the department.

He added that Denise Platt, chair of the Commission of Social Care Inspection, was also set to carry out a programme of work on leadership in social care for the government which would help.

Lewis said that he recognised the impact health services’ financial difficulties were having on social care. He said that professionals needed to make health managers realise that if they invested in preventive services at the interface between health and social care then they would have to spend less on acute services.

He added that he expected genuine joint working to take place between different services in all areas.

“At a local level people have to stop making excuses about why they can’t work through those dividers [between different services].

“Why is it in some localities we have brilliant outcomes in terms of partnership and in others we don’t,” he concluded.