This afternoon Dame Louise Casey, Chair of the Casey Commission into the future of adult social care, shared her first thoughts and some early recommendations ahead of an interim report in the summer.
At its best, social care helps us to find and bind together the support and resources that allow us to live well in the place we call home. But as Dame Casey explained, too many people and families struggle to find the right care and support, and their lives come apart as a result. That costs us all. That’s why we welcome the ambition in today’s speech from Baroness Louise Casey to radically reimagine and redesign social care to be fit for the future.
We can see green shoots of the root and branch change needed in initiatives like ‘Live More’ in Greater Manchester, where people and families living with dementia are being reached earlier and offered shared lives support to stay active and connected to the people, places and things that matter to them. In turn it is hoped that this will help people to avoid crisis, unplanned hospital admissions or premature and unwanted moves into residential care. We hope that the Casey Commission will cast light on these ‘glimpses of the future’ and more crucially help articulate and generate a more fertile climate for them to grow and prosper.
Doing so demands a radical shift in our understanding of the purpose, nature and value of adult social care, and of who currently holds power and control over how it is imagined and designed. The Casey Commission has an opportunity to lead by example, closely involving people and families who draw on support in its work. That’s why we’re pleased the Commission team have said they’re committed to working with #SocialCareFuture so that voices of people who draw on social care are powerfully heard in the next stage of the Commission’s work and beyond.
#SocialCareFuture convener, Andy McCabe who draws on social care said:
“Dame Casey has powerfully drawn attention to the many challenges facing those of us who have reason to draw on adult social care to live our lives, and we share her frustration at the slow pace of reform. We take hope from her ambition for a radically reimagined and redesigned approach, fit for the future and we stand ready to work with the Commission to bring it about, including to ensure that the experience and expertise of those of us who draw on adult social care take centre stage as this work evolves”
Contact Andy McCabe at socialcarefuture@gmail.com
