Sector leaders have urged the government to “change course on social care” after a week in which it cancelled the cap on care costs and a planned increase to workforce training funding.
In an open letter to health and social care secretary Wes Streeting, more than 30 leaders said the decisions had “raised alarm bells” for those working in, and receiving, social care.
And in a reference to the pay settlements granted to public sector staff outside of the sector, they said these were “a bitter pill for social care in a climate where other public services and their workforces are finally having their contribution recognised”.
The letter was signed by the heads of seven of the major umbrella bodies for care providers: learning disability body ARC England, the Association of Mental Health Providers, Care England, the Homecare Association, the National Care Association, the National Care Forum and the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group.
Other signatories included the heads of the Social Care Institute for Excellence, Learning Disability England, which represents people with learning disabilities and their families and several providers and local provider associations.
Ditched social care policies
Their intervention came days after the government first scrapped the adult social care charging reforms, due to come into force in October 2025, and then ditched the adult social care training and development fund proposed by its Conservative predecessor.
Both decisions were made to tackle a £21.9bn projected overspend on public spending, which chancellor Rachel Reeves said had been bequeathed to Labour by the Conservatives. This was despite £9.4bn of the funding gap being down to the incoming government’s decision to accept recommendations on public sector pay made by independent review bodies.
In their open letter to Streeting, the sector leaders acknowledged the “hugely challenging” economic situation. However, they stressed that social care was critical to delivering some of the new government’s key ambitions.
“Without high quality social care, it will be impossible to fix the broken NHS,” they said. “Without high quality social care, it will be impossible to sustain economic growth. Without high quality social care, it will be impossible to lift-up our communities and the people that live in them.”
‘Change course on social care’
The letter added: “We now need to see positive action on social care. There is time, political capital, and the expertise of a united social care sector to make this happen. We urge the government to change course and we stand ready to help you transform social care for the millions who work in it and most vitally, rely upon it.”
The sector leaders also referenced Labour’s two key policy pledges on social care: to introduce a fair pay agreement for the workforce and, over the next decade, to set up a national care service.
The fair pay agreement is designed to raise pay, terms and conditions for staff and will be legislated for in the forthcoming Employment Rights Bill, though the government is yet to say how the improvements will be funded.
It has also not fleshed out what it means by a national care service.
In their letter, the sector leaders said they needed “assurances about the timeframes and support needed to move to a national care service and the introduction of a fair pay agreement for care workers”.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 
Hampshire County Council 
Lincolnshire County Council 
Norfolk County Council 
Northamptonshire Children’s Trust 
South Gloucestershire Council 
Wiltshire Council 
Wokingham Borough Council 
Children and young people with SEND are ‘valued and prioritised’ in Wiltshire, find inspectors 
How specialist refugee teams benefit young people and social workers 
Podcast: returning to social work after becoming a first-time parent 
Podcast: would you work for an inadequate-rated service? 
Family help: one local authority’s experience of the model 
‘We are all one big family’: how one council has built a culture of support 
Workforce Insights – showcasing a selection of the sector’s top recruiters 
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
Instagram
Adult social care has never been respected, we are paid less than childrens social workers and the as the social care services are mainly private and based on profit and market forces are extremely expensive, yet pay their staff a pittance, someone is getting rich at their expense. The glorified NHS has all the money and respect because they have the BMA we have Social Work England who are not worth our professional fee. Social care is vilified constantly, we take people money in care costs. Being in social care for over 40 years and having worked up from a social care worker in both home care and residential, I have seen how we are treated by the health service, yet without us who are they. At the height of Covid, the Directive was to discharge as many people out of hospital, who did this, social care, we supported people at home and in their communities, no one clapped for us. No ones cares about us, it’s demoralising. Until there is a serious discussion and thought about integrating health and social care, with a aging population, both services and workers will decline and hospitals will be the new place of care. You have been warned.
the financial pictures also have suggested that a return to warehousing people is a consideration ~ you’re not wrong Claire; scary innit!
I couldn’t,t agree more.I have had personal experience of this.My hubby needs Carer & I am 1 of them,even though I am need myself,following stroke.
He was admitted to hospital following a fall,which caused dizziness.Diagnosed with Low Blood pressure which was sorted with beds.Medically fit after 10 days but had become so weak due to being confined to bed/chaired,couldn’t,t walk.Prior he could walk,shower,cook,drive etc.He remained for 3 months awaiting care.
Then,same thing happened this year.Back to sqare 1 only now incontinent too,as encourage to urinated & poo in pad as staff Don,t have time to help him to toilet.
That is NHS failure but I know that if Social Care was sorted ,NHS would follow.
It is appalling how Carers are treated ,whilst Care Companies getting rich at expense of this .
This is not a time to neglect social care. Social Care and unpaid carers are the uk’s unsung hero’s supporting the most vulnerable in our society and they ask for very little in return.
I totally agree with you Daniel, I work within social care and feel like s”””t on someone’s shoe and yet we are looking after some of the most vulnerable people in society. Without us nobody would leave hospital and return home. I see my job as a social care worker as an extremely important job, more so than an MP who earns ridiculous money that we pay for as tax payers, working for us the public to make changes on our behalf. Wake up governments you need to act now as the older population are expanding, there will be nobody to look after themselves people.
I have worked as a carer in various setting for 30 years .the disrespect I get when I mention what I do is difficult to take.i love the work I do it has suited me to do it part time to fit around self employment. The pay is OK but I have alot more responsibility than someone who works in a shop and have to do alot of training on some difficult subjects. I do not feel valued. How do we get to be respected for what we do.i am sick of being told all I am is an arsenal wiper
“Commissioning is the purposeful management of the vested professional and organisational interests, obligations and responsibilities with the sole intention of addressing economic and social disadvantage and deprivations by meeting the needs of local residents to satisfy and exceed statutory requirements.” Fraher 2008 (Critical Risk Report)
Andy Burham, then MP and SofS for Health has been asking for a new consensus for decades ~ maybe he’ll be invited to the table as Chair of the proposed All-Party Committee announcements.
Stella Creasy’s input wouldn’t go a miss as bottom up and community level engagement with Cllrs is very much needed ~ maybe an Assembly approach would help as long as the vested interests are managed properly (the number of Officers, including City Solicitors, with nondisclosed interests in CICs or other nonprofits undertaking audit work is out of control)
The key message from the May 19th 2007 meeting between SOLACE and Senior Public Procurement Managers ought to be used to focus minds and bring sharp attention to the fact that social care contracting and procurement is a wholly inadequate method of resources allocation and largely sanctioned way outside the scope of the decision makers authority ~ there is no evidence of a freedom to contract!
Strictly speaking ALL the organisations mentioned in the article and signing the letter are economic entities with a commercial interest irrespective of their espoused legal identities ~ it’s time to get very real and not before time too ~ Whose Services Are They Anyway?
There should be shed load of information gathered over the decades, afterall Quality Protects, Tackling Drugs, Valuing People and Supporting People to name a few were by any other name Category Sourcing Programmes. The previous asymmetric hold established by the public sector is over ~ the setting up of ICB’s are testimony to this.
Provider interests are vested interests! It is a buyer beware market!
Cllrs across the country have got their work cut out for them that’s for sure ~ unless, as is likely the case, the efforts to hand-off genuine enquiries becomes an unnecessarily long wrangle over information rights and the use of the FOIA. If, these mechanisms it wasn’t so painful and antidemocratic it’d be good laugh!
Demand damping is sewn-in to all the latest IT solutions software across primary care and the NHS ~ Going Digital and NHS Interoperability hasn’t lived up to it’s expectations; IT procurement like the procurement of social care simply can’t deliver what is actually needed. For sure It’s helpful but the overall information management architecture is woefully inadequate. And, always has been! (Ask Ken Jerrold OBE, I am sure he’ll tell you it’s the truth.)
The Principle of Solidarity remains a hallmark of comprehensive services and the universal services obligation ~ the financial modelling though requires some innovation and like most good innovation requires building on what worked before and taking it forward in a new way.
The 70s arrangements for payments of travel and subsistence as compensation for keeping an eye on your neighbours worked! Adding, in a pension contribution might too? Increasing the availability of local ‘morally responsible non-professionally involved people’ acting as true citizen’s advocates as initially intended. There’s loads of good people out there, surely so, right?
Social protection is seated in the ethic of caring and it’s said that “Advocacy arises from the ethic of caring by entering into a relationship with another person and when needed acting for that person as if their concerns were your own” Abrahams 1976 as, then, statutory guidance for nurse advocacy.
Social Work remains a necessary conduit for advocacy as ‘we’ have some exemptions under the DPA to make sure that the information gathered or held by others is actually accurate ~ gp’s have and do code patient contacts in rather spurious ways to bolster the practice numbers in particular categories to meet with contract and commissioning requirements! And, LMC’s can and do make clinical decisions to protect the incumbent provider contracts from competitors ~ this ain’t new and the rivalry created by the internal market pitches clinician against clinician; professionalisation, eh!
Social Work is the balancing feedback for Medicine not just a functional aspect of it, right?
I too started out in vert much the same job although it was a compulsory requirement at the time for £10 + dole ~ it was the hardest and best job I ever done; getting close enough to someone else so they’d let you give them a shave knowing that you wouldn’t be remembered much after ~ truly amazing! I salute you Allison as others here will too.