Towards an Equal Life - My Presentation at Conservative Fringe on Social Care

Good evening. I’m a social worker by profession. I worked for 20 years in social care with councils and for 15 years with DHSC, NHSE and other national agencies. I'm now one of four voluntary convenors of a network called Social Care Future. We are people who draw on social care to live our lives, families, workers, managers, support providers, academics, politicians and others.

?We have come together from a combination of frustration and hope. Frustration because the main ways social care is offered have not really changed over decades - ?too much of what is offered is institutional in nature and focused on keeping people alive but not really having a life. Hope because we see glimpses of a better future in approaches and practices around the country. We believe these could be spread and scaled in a way that could produce the win-win of much better and much more financially sustainable social care.

We are generally disappointed by the reform debates that have taken place in recent years which have not produced proposals that we believe will achieve this win win – including the current ones. The proposals that have emerged have, in large part focussed on how to fund what social care does now. We firmly agree that there is a major funding gap and that this needs to be addressed. But we worry that if all this does is offer more of what is currently provided and more security to homeowners this would be a massive, missed opportunity.

We believe that one of the reasons for the limited focus and conservative proposals is that people who draw on social care and the general public have been largely excluded from the debates. So those who do get involved in the policy debates and practice decisions don’t hear ideas and issues that are crucial to really improving things. One example would be that when social care is talked about by the media and by politicians it seems interchangeable with care homes illustrated with pictures of wrinkly hands and headless walking frames – yet when asked most people don’t see a care home as an attractive option for themselves, want to be supported at home or call for options and choices if they are not able to continue living in their original home.

My colleague convenor Anna Severwright, a disabled woman, sat on this panel at the…other conference in Brighton and if she could have travelled to Manchester would have been sitting here instead of me.

Earlier this year, our network supported a group of older and disabled people and family members frustrated by their exclusion from debates, to set up their own inquiry. Chaired by Anna It was called “Whose Social Care is it Anyway”. It is inverting the usual process by starting from people who draw on social care and their families.

It started with a vision (something national policies don’t, despite many papers with the word vision in them)

This vision was developed over two years in many discussions, gatherings, engagements with people and families and their allies who work in social care. It is:

We all want to live in the place we call home, with the people and things that we love, in communities that look out for one another, doing things that matter to us

This vision has been tested with the public and local politicians in polling and focus groups with the help of Survation and it shifts people’s ideas of what social care should and could be

The question the inquiry asked was: what would need to change to make this a reality for you or people you love? The resulting report was called From Permanent Lockdown to an Equal Life It called for some key changes from national and local politicians to make strong progress towards achieving this vision. We are now working with local government, social care leaders and providers on the part they could play in driving these changes in coming years. They will be impossible if central government don’t help create a policy and financial framework to enable them

·??????In the short term this is about lives now- many don’t qualify for support, families describe it as a fight, people now near the end of their life are not able to see loved ones or do things that give their lives meaning and purpose – something far beyond the reductive washing, dressing, feeding phrase which is often seen as the purpose of social care

·??????Going forward we don’t know what is to come from reform beyond the cap and floor and some workforce ￡ . The things announced so far won’t have a significant effect on most people who currently use social care

·??????Gov white paper as far as we understand it in 3 months time, the development of which so far is not including people . The media coverage all wrinkly hands and funding. We need to hear from wider voices in the development of the White Paper

·??????This government is in a position to do something big – to do this the next stages of the policy need to be brave and transformational. Can’t just tinker around the edges.

·??????One thing we call for is funding very explicitly focussed on change. For decades social care leaders have talked about a shift to prevention and personalisation – and we have learned much about how this can be done but it can’t be done without a focus on it. This change can’t happen overnight so we have made specific proposals about a funded process to take the best and spread it over the next few years ?