Our Chair, Mike Padgham, gives his view on what Labour must do first to reform social care in the full text of an article that appeared in the Yorkshire Post.
The election is over, the people have spoken and we have a new Government to take us more or less to the end of the 2020s…
In fairness to them, since the results were declared, Labour has hit the ground running, with new PM Sir Keir Starmer not allowing his first Cabinet to get used to their new offices but instead getting them out, starting the work of government.
The Foreign Secretary, David Lammy is touring Germany, Poland and Sweden; Defence Secretary John Healey has been to Ukraine and Sir Keir himself is on a tour of the UK.
All well and good, but it is closer to home that those of us champing at the bit for social care reform want to see urgent action.
It is encouraging to see new Health Secretary Wes Streeting getting straight on with talks to try to end the junior doctors' strikes. That must be a priority.
But close to the top of that list must be measures to tackle the crisis in social care. If the NHS is ‘broken’ as Mr Streeting says, then social care must be regarded as falling apart.
And we will not be able to repair one without mending the other.
For Labour, and for those of us campaigning on behalf of one cause or another, the hard work starts now.
We have to persuade the new PM and Mr Streeting – to make reform of social care a priority. They will have a letter from me to that effect amongst all the others in their in-trays. I have invited both to visit us here in North Yorkshire to see first-hand the challenges currently facing social care. I hope Mr Streeting in particular will accept that invitation very soon.
Labour has promised a National Care Service, eventually; greater social care integration with NHS services and fairer pay, terms and conditions for the workforce. It also says it will honour the scheduled cap on care costs to prevent people from having to sell their homes to pay for care.
I have no argument with their proposals – save maybe that they lack the bold, once-in-a-generation opportunity approach we might have hoped for.
What does concern me, however, is their timetable. They have hinted that it will take the first five years of their government to see a start to change. In his first speech in the role, Mr Streeting warned that the NHS would not be fixed overnight, but he is getting on with the job. We hope that he is similarly swift in tackling the issues in social care, as both have to be tackled in tandem.
For too long social care has been the poor relation to NHS care and it shows. Mr Streeting needs to demonstrate that he views them both equally. He could show his commitment by renaming his department the Department of Social Care and Health…
There are things that simply have to change: to get care to 1.6m people who currently can’t get it; to provide care packages to the average of 14,000 people who cannot be discharged from hospital each week because there is no help available for them and to pay staff properly and tackle the 152,000 staff vacancies in the sector. These things cannot wait and certainly not for a slew of reports, white papers, green papers and such that we have seen before. I am also no fan of the “cross-party talks” that politicians seem to favour when it comes to discussions on social care. Yes, it would be nice if everyone agreed with whatever proposals are put forward, but the chances are they won’t, and we haven’t time for party politics when people’s quality of life is at stake.
Our minds will rest easier if we see some positive action quickly. We have been let down by previous promises of social care reform that came to nothing. A certain Boris Johnson, standing where Sir Keir stood last week, promising to get social care done ‘once and for all.’ We all know how that worked out… it didn’t.
I think we all need the reassurance and evidence that things will be different this time.
We have therefore urged Mr Starmer and Mr Streeting to do the following during their first 100 days of Government: tap into and use the expertise of organisations like ours to see what needs to be done from day one; immediately reverse the Conservatives’ ban on overseas recruits bringing over their dependents, which has stifled vital recruitment; introduce and fund a minimum wage for social care staff, supported by ring-fenced funding for commissioners to pay for it and set minimum, standardised rates for care beds and homecare hours that commissioners must pay when purchasing care. And we have asked them to raise carers’ allowance for unpaid carers who do such an amazing job.
They might not be described as “quick wins” but nor are they issues that need months of navel-gazing consideration before they can be implemented. They will need funding but should be paid for by switching resources from the NHS to social care. And they will save the NHS money by keeping people out of costly hospitals.
There will be many who argue that we need to take a slow, measured approach to make sure we get social care reform right this time. I cannot argue with that.
But sometimes, rather than plan and prepare for the perfect solution, you just need to get on and do the sensible things that will make the most difference quickly and get into the details and the debates later. This is one of those times.