Health Secretary Wes Streeting has ordered an independent probe to look at reforming the crisis-hit social care sector – but the final proposals won’t be published until 2028
Thousands of disabled and elderly people will be given help to stay in their homes as part of an overhaul of crisis-hit social care.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting will today kickstart plans to fix the sector, which is buckling under pressure from rising demand and years of underfunding. Under the proposals, an additional £86million will be set aside to help older and disabled people stay out of hospital this year, easing the pressure on the NHS.
The boost to the Disabled Facilities Grant, which comes on top of £86million announced in the Budget for next year and brings the annual pot to £711million, will allow an additional 7,800 people to stay at home by installing stairlifts, ramps and wet rooms.
Social care workers will also be trained to carry out more health checks, such as blood pressure tests, redressing wounds, managing diabetes, adjusting catheters and mental health support, in a bid to free up hospital beds. Mr Streeting will also announce a new data-sharing scheme so NHS and care staff can access up to date medical information.
Baroness Louise Casey has been tasked with leading an independent probe into social care, to pave the way for the “National Care Service” that Labour promised in its manifesto.
Starting in April, the review will hone in on the most critical issues dogging the sector and publish initial recommendations by the middle of next year. A second phase, reporting by 2028, will make longer-term recommendations – including on funding, an issue which has repeatedly been kicked into the long grass.
But the Government faced calls to speed up the timetable to help pensioners who “don’t have time on their side”. Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK, said: “Far-reaching reform and refinancing of social care is long overdue, so today’s announcement is unequivocally good news – it could potentially finally break the logjam that has stood in the way for many years.”
But she added: “The most sensitive issue of how to fund the social care needs of our rapidly ageing population is not set to be addressed until the second phase of the commission and this is a major concern, partly because today’s older people do not have time on their side but also because who knows what the state of the world, our politics or our economy will be by then.
“The risk is that future events prevent the progress we desperately need to see and the more long drawn out the commission is, the greater the risk will be.”
Sarah Woolnough, chief executive at The King’s Fund, also urged the Government to “accelerate the timing”. “This could offer a real opportunity to break the cycle of failure to reform social care,” Ms Woolnough said.
“But we urge the Government to accelerate the timing of the second phase of the commission which focuses on creating a fair and affordable social care system. The current timetable to report by 2028 is far too long to wait for people who need social care, and their families.”
Labour abandoned the long-delayed cap on care costs in the summer after Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the move had not been properly funded by the last Government.
Boris Johnson, who promised to fix social care when he became PM in 2019, announced in 2021 that there would be an £86,000 cap on lifetime care costs from October 2023. But the move was delayed to October 2025 by Jeremy Hunt after Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget caused economic chaos.
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Keir Starmer made driving down NHS waiting lists a key plank of his ‘Plan for Change’ where he set out how voters could judge him by the next election. But the Government has not yet spelled out its plans to fix the broken system.
Mr Streeting said Baroness Casey will finally “grasp the nettle” on social care reform and help to create a social care service that endures like the NHS. He went on: “The investment and reforms we’re announcing today will help to modernise social care, get it working more closely with the NHS, and help deliver our Plan for Change.
“But our ageing society, with costs of care set to double in the next 20 years, demands longer term action. The independent commission will work to build a national consensus around a new National Care Service able to meet the needs of older and disabled people into the 21st Century.”
The Health Secretary has asked opposition parties to take part, to “ensure the national care service survives governments of different shades, just as our NHS has for the past 76 years”.
Baroness Casey previously led reviews into the failure of children’s services in the Rotherham grooming gangs scandal and the Metropolitan Police following the murder of Sarah Everard by serving officer Wayne Couzens.