Baroness Casey has brought welcome clarity to the scale of the challenge facing social care. Her framing of the sector’s pressures—demographic change, growing complexity of need, and a system built through ‘add-ons and workarounds’—will resonate with many across the sector. The Commission’s extensive engagement with organisations, practitioners and people with lived experience is encouraging, and we look forward to working with Baroness Casey and the Commission as this important work progresses.
Her call for a moment of reckoning and renewal is an important one. Social care has never had the kind of design moment that shaped other parts of the welfare state. If we are serious about reform, we need to be honest about the pressures created by demographic change and rising complexity of need, and clear with the public about what a future system of care and support should provide.
We also welcome the focus on strengthening safeguarding. The proposal to establish a new National Safeguarding Board could help ensure that learning is shared and responsibilities are clearer across the system. This is an important step to ensuring that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility.
Gerard Crofton-Martin
Interim Chief Executive of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)