Health Management and Policy Alert

Sector pulse check: adult social care sector annual review

Care England - 
This annual report provides an overview of the financial and workforce challenges facing the adult social care sector and highlights the most significant and critical issues. It follows an independent national survey with 206 small, medium and large social care providers, representing the care of 128,000 people.

• Report
• Press release

Sector pulse check: adult social care sector annual review

Care England - 

This annual report, produced together with the learning disability charity Hft, analyses the financial health and workforce of adult social care, providing an important benchmark for the nature and scale of challenges facing the sector. The research highlights how the current approach to adult social care funding simply isn’t working; the sector remains in a sustained crisis.

• Annual report
• Press release

lnnovating for independence: better value, better outcomes in social care

Reform -
This event write-up brings together ideas generated at a Reform policy roundtable, hosted as part of a series with Lilli, which explored the opportunities of, and barriers to, scaling innovative technology in social care.

• Reform
• Reform - publications

Earlier action and support: the case for prevention in adult social care and beyond

Local Government Association (LGA) - 

Prevention is a central feature of the government’s mission-led approach to national renewal. This joint publication (from the LGA, Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), Social Care Institute for Excellence, Mencap, Skills for Care, Think Local Act Personal, The Care Provider Alliance and Social Care Future) makes the case for a shift towards taking action and offering support earlier, so that more people can live the lives they want.

• Publication

Accelerating Reform Fund 2024 to 2025: grant determination

Department of Health -
The Accelerating Reform Fund provides a total of £42.6 million over the financial years 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025. It supports local authorities, working in integrated care system consortia, to take forward projects that scale innovations in adult social care and improve services for unpaid carers. This is the grant determination for the Adult Social Care Accelerating Reform Fund for 2024 to 2025, outlining funding allocations for the £22.6 million allocated for that year.

• Guidance
• Department of Health - publications

What needs to improve for social care to better support people with dementia?

Nuffield Trust -
The number of people living with dementia in the UK is rising. Even if treatments can be developed quickly, the social care system needs to change in order to better support the growing numbers of people affected. This report sets out what the current challenges are with providing good social care for people with dementia, and makes recommendations about what needs to change to improve social care for people with dementia.

• Report
• Nuffield Trust - publications

Will the Autumn Budget push the social care sector beyond breaking point?

Nuffield Trust -
According to this analysis, changes to Employer National Insurance Contributions announced in October 2024 look set to cost the adult social care sector over £900m next year, wiping out the extra funds allocated to social care. Taken together with the planned increases to National Minimum Wage rates, it says that the 18,000 independent organisations providing adult social care in England will be faced with increased costs of an estimated £2.8bn in the next financial year. This could mean that many businesses - especially smaller ones - are at risk of going bust, disrupting or ending care for thousands of older and disabled people.

• Briefing
• Nuffield Trust - press release

Social care commissions: looking back to move forward

The Health Foundation - 

England’s social care system is in desperate need of reform and investment. This long read summarises previous reviews of social care policy and their range of approaches to developing reform proposals. It then sets out the key proposals for reform made in previous reviews, highlighting notable gaps and areas of consensus, and evidence on their implementation. The long read concludes with the key takeaways for the current government as it develops its social care policy.

• Long read
• Associated appendix

‘I can’t see myself doing this forever’: younger people’s experiences of working in adult social care

The King's Fund - 

The King’s Fund has explored the role of young people in the social care workforce and, specifically, the question: what can social care do to recruit and retain more younger workers? It finds that younger workers have the skills and talent needed to work in adult social care but too often leave because of a lack of support and poor workplace culture.

• Long read

The forgotten story of social care: the case for improving outcomes for working age and lifelong disabled adults

County Councils Network (CCN) - 

This analysis by CCN and Newton reveals that the costs of providing social care for working age adults and life-long disabled people is now far outpacing social care to the over 65s, with two-thirds of adult social care commissioning budgets dedicated to working age and lifelong disabled adults. Alongside CCN calling for a significant increase in funding for councils to meet rising costs to ensure the quality and safety of care services for working age and lifelong disabled adults is maintained, the report outlines the need for a review of funding arrangements for services and proposes a number of reforms to the system to focus more on prevention and to help people live more independent lives to reduce future costs.

• Download the report via press release