‘The 10-Year Health Plan Will Fail Without Us’-Sector Leaders Call For Parity With The NHS
More than 20 CEOs and Directors from across social care gathered in London last week for a roundtable organised by The Access Group and Casson Consulting. The discussion, chaired by Kathryn Marsden OBE, CEO of Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), and Gary Fee, CEO of City & County Healthcare (CCH) Group, explored what role adult social care plays in the delivery of the10-Year Health Plan.
The timing of the discussion is critical. Demand for health and social care services is at historic highs, with waiting lists at record levels and both systems under sustained pressure. Hopes of fixing these issues hinge on the 10-Year Health Plan, a blueprint that will set the terms for delivery across the system.
Against this backdrop, Marsden set out the 10-Year Health Plan’s three shifts and what role social care plays within each. She warned that despite social care’s centrality to each shift, the sector is given only passing reference within the Plan.
“The 10-Year Health Plan is framed primarily through an NHS lens, with only passing reference to social care. If the three shifts are to succeed, social care must not only be recognised as integral but also actively positioned as the enabler. This means aligning care services with the Plan’s ambitions; embedding social care in neighbourhood health systems, digitising to connect care pathways, and harnessing the care sector’s prevention capacity and capabilities. Without this, the Plan risks repeating past failures of integration” said Marsden.
Fee built on this with a call for providers to step forward and bring the solutions needed:
“Being kept outside the design but inside the delivery doesn’t work. Social care knows what keeps people well, prevents admissions and speeds recovery. That expertise must shape the Plan from the start,” said Fee.
James Maynard, Commercial Director at Access HSC, adds:
“through our work with care providers, local authorities and the NHS, we see daily how siloed thinking undermines both sectors and the desired delivery of quality person-centred care.”
Daniel Casson of Casson Consulting commented:
“Social care has the power to unlock the path to the success of the 10-Year Health Plan. It is ambitious and the community assets we have in social care can bring health and wellbeing closer to home and swing the pendulum towards wellbeing rather than treatment of sickness.”
Fee concluded by urging social care to step forward as an equal partner with the NHS:
“You cannot fix a whole system by empowering only half of it. The Plan stands or falls on outcomes, and those outcomes depend on social care. As a sector it is time we step forward and help shape a system worthy of the nation’s health.”
