SCIE and TLAP respond to Prime Minister’s three social care announcements

We welcome the Prime Minister’s personal commitment to social care reform. Social care is for everybody. Almost all of us will be touched by care at some point in our lives, whether that’s supporting someone we love or receiving care ourselves.

Yet we know the current system is plagued by inequity; people with similar needs can face very different experiences depending on where they live: from timely, personalised support that enables independence and dignity, to long waiting lists, high eligibility thresholds and unmet basic needs.

As the government considers the future of adult social care through the Casey Commission and the development of a National Care Service, questions of fairness, consistency and equity are becoming increasingly important. Our new research, published this week on care equity, shows how factors like disability, income, where people live, ethnicity, age and gender all affect the care people get. It also shows how problems in accessing care can build up over time: difficulties faced early on can make it harder to get the right help later.

The Prime Minister’s recommendation to bring forward the Casey Commission’s final report to 2027 is a welcome step. Critically, the Big Conversation with the public, launched today by Baroness Casey, must include people who draw on care, and their families and carers. Reform can’t be effective if it’s removed from the realities of people with lived experience; it must instead recognise and respect their invaluable expertise and place them at the centre of all conversations and decisions.

Cross-party support is essential to all of this. We must ensure that progress is not lost to the political tides. Beyond cross-party support, we also need public buy-in. Public understanding and support have been a missing link in previous attempts to reform the care sector; failure to galvanise public support has meant the many previous efforts to reform social care never took hold.

We now have a chance to build consensus across the public, politicians and the social care sector. Only through this consensus can we build a system that helps people live the lives they want – in homes they love, connected to their communities, with control and dignity.

For too many people, the current reality of social care is a system that is difficult to understand, difficult to access and, too often, only responds when someone’s life has reached crisis point. People can be left waiting, repeatedly proving their needs or going without support altogether, losing independence, relationships, opportunities and confidence while they try to navigate a fragmented and opaque system.

Social care must be about far more than keeping people safe or meeting their most basic needs. It should create the conditions for people to live fulfilling and gloriously ordinary lives: choosing when to get up and go to bed, maintaining relationships, having a suitable home, working, learning or volunteering, and participating fully in family and community life.

Achieving that requires reliable and personalised support, earlier help before crisis, fair and consistent access wherever people live, and a skilled, respected and properly supported workforce with the time to build relationships and deliver good care. It also means recognising that too many family and friend carers are being expected to fill the gaps in formal support at an unsustainable personal cost.

People who draw on care and support, alongside family and friend carers, must have real power in shaping the future, not simply be consulted after the important decisions have already been made. Their lived experience is not an optional perspective; it is essential expertise.

The true test of reform will not be the number of reports published, policies announced or structures created. It will be whether, on an ordinary Thursday morning, people experience greater choice, control, dignity and confidence that the right support will be there when they need it. Social care succeeds when it enables people to live the lives they choose, not merely the lives the system permits.