About Us

Team ADASS - 2008/09:

From left to right

Jane Ashman (Assistant Honorary Secretary), John Dixon, (President), Anne Williams (Immediate Past President), Jenny Owen (Vice President), John Beer (Honorary Secretary), Peter Hay (Honorary Treasurer). Assistant Honorary Secretary Dawn Warwick was not available for this photograph.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) represents all the directors of adult social services in England and Northern Ireland. It evolved from the former ADSS (Association of Directors of Social Services) when responsibilities for adults and children’s services within top tier local authorities were split between two new departments - the one for adults and the other for children.

ADASS brings together the accumulated wisdom and understanding of the way services for adults are managed and financed as well as inputs from a widening responsibility for housing, leisure, library, culture and, in some case, arts and sports facilities.

Our members are responsible for providing or commissioning, through the activities of their departments, the wellbeing, protection and care of hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled people, as well as for the promotion of that wellbeing and protection wherever it is needed.

ADASS members, too, are responsible for a whole range of wider services in addition to their responsibilities to adult social care. We work through a staff group which, in direct and indirect forms of employment, number more than the total staff engaged in the NHS.

At the same we maintain the closest possible formal and informal links with colleagues in the health services, children’s services departments and in the independent provision of day and residential services to older people. We continue actively to inform and brief government ministers and civil servants about the impact of their policies; work with them on policy initiatives wherever appropriate, while engaging with opinion formers across the whole spectrum of current media outlets.

The links on the left lead to information including

Regions 

Contact Us  - How to contact the Association, with details of our full and associate members, the presidential team, and Business Unit.

Key Speeches - Major addresses given by ADASS members within the past two months

Networks - As a new Association, ADASS is taking the opportunity to review its working arrangements. As soon as work on these structures are complete, full details will be posted.

Publications and Guidance - Including consultation responses, guidance, policy and other publications

Regions - The Association has ten regions which meet informally on a regular basis: their size varies from four to 34 members.  

Research - Details on research being carried out, advice, contacts etc

Search - use this search engine to access the entire ADASS website

What’s new - The latest additions to the site