Focus on How Care Is Funded, Government Urged

Care Sector Leaders have urged the government to focus on how the social care sector is funded rather than the “structures sitting above it,” amid media reports that plans for a standalone national care service have been abandoned.

Responding to reports that the Government is no longer considering a standalone arm’s-length body to oversee adult social care reform, the Care Association that the sector must not be overlooked once again.

Melanie Weatherley MBE, Co-Chair of the Care Association Alliance, said: “Social care does not need its own version of the NHS. An arm’s-length body sitting above the system is not what we have been calling for, and it is not what determines whether people receive good care. A national framework is essential, but it can be built within the structures we already have.

“What worries me is the risk that dropping the idea of a new body quietly becomes an excuse to drop social care altogether, and the sector is overlooked once again, as it has been so many times before.

“The point we keep making is a simple one. What matters is not the structure sitting above the system, but the funding settlement sitting beneath it. Access to care is still shaped by geography as much as by need, providers are paid rates that do not cover their costs, and families face bills they cannot predict. None of that changes by creating or removing an organisation. It changes only with a national funding settlement, and that is the work Ministers cannot afford to leave until 2028.”