Care England Rates the Last government “Requires Improvement” on Social Care

Care England has today published Two Years of Promises, a scorecard grading the government’s delivery against every commitment in Labour’s 2024 manifesto that bears on adult social care, from the National Care Service and the Fair Pay Agreement to immigration, employment rights and hospital discharge. The overall grade, which comes as Andy Burnham spoke of the need for urgent wholesale reform, is a C minus, or, in the ratings language care providers are judged by every day, “requires improvement”.

The scorecard credits real progress, including the first multi-year settlement for councils in a decade, the largest ever rise in the Carer’s Allowance earnings limit, and landmark legislation in the Employment Rights Act and the Mental Health Act. But it finds a consistent pattern where, when a promise could be kept by passing a law, it was passed, and where a promise needed money, it stalled. Two years in, there is no social care workforce plan, no national standards, and a Fair Pay Agreement backed by £500 million while frozen tax thresholds are set to take £1.4 billion from care workers’ pay packets over the same period.

The government received failing grades against two commitments. The rise in employer National Insurance contributions imposed the highest single cost increase the sector has faced in a generation, with the NHS compensated for the measure and care providers left to absorb it. And on immigration, the government delivered the restriction it promised while the workforce and training plans that were meant to accompany it never materialised, a combination Care England describes as having “carved out a huge hole in our workforce with no plan to fill it domestically”.

Professor Martin Green OBE, Chief Executive of Care England, said: “This government made the right promises on social care, and where it has delivered, our scorecard says so plainly. But too much of what was promised exists only on paper. Laws were passed without the money to make them real, reform was handed to a commission, and in its first Budget the government imposed the biggest cost increase this sector has seen in a generation, compensated the NHS for it, and left care to carry it alone. A C minus is not a hostile grade. It is an honest one, and it should not be mistaken for nearly good enough. In the language our members are judged in every day of the year, this is a service that requires improvement. And for the people who draw on care and the people who provide it, too little has actually changed.”

The scorecard pairs its grades with seven steps the new Prime Minister could take in his first year, none requiring new legislation. Together they are the chance to turn the hope his arrival has generated into change that reaches the person waiting for care, the care worker paying their bills, and the provider deciding whether to stay open.

Care England is calling on the Prime Minister to:

• Publish the social care workforce and training plan the manifesto promised
• Reverse the earned settlement proposals as they apply to care workers, a change already urged from within the government’s own ranks
• Fund the Fair Pay Agreement honestly, with commissioners under the same legal duty to fund fair wages as providers will be to pay them
• Pass councils’ multi-year funding certainty through to the providers they commission
• Put a national commissioning framework for hospital discharge in place before winter, so empty care beds are contracted in October rather than considered in January
• Apply a care test to fiscal policy, so no future Budget imposes costs on care that it compensates the NHS for
• Invite Baroness Casey to accelerate her commission, as she has said she can, rather than treating 2028 as the earliest date

Beyond the seven steps, Care England is inviting him to secure it early by publishing a 100-day plan for social care. There is real hope in this sector again, and it now rests on the new Prime Minister. He knows what the sector is asking for, and the seven steps above are its foundations already laid. Care England and its members stand ready to help deliver a plan worthy of that hope.

Professor Martin Green OBE concluded: “Andy Burnham enters Downing Street having put social care at the heart of what he wants his premiership to be, and this sector has noticed. There is hope in social care again, and hope of that kind has been in short supply. Our scorecard is not a verdict on him; it is the baseline he inherits and a map of where delivery must begin. The seven steps we set out need no new legislation and would move the grades on this card within a year. Social care is his to fix, and ours to help him fix, and the work starts now.”