My first meeting with our new Care Services Minister Norman Lamb coincided with the launch by the Institute of Public Care at Oxford Brookes University of its major new programme to help local authorities develop care markets for quality and choice. The initiative flows from the general duty towards all local people, to be enshrined in the forthcoming Care and Support Bill, for local authorities to provide information and advice services, as well as promote local market arrangements `so that there are high quality services to meet people’s choices.’

Mike Farrar, the chief executive of the NHS Confed recently warned that the current health reforms represent a potentially fatal distraction from the real tasks facing the NHS in managing the money and tackling the desperate “need to strengthen care provided in the community”.

The emerging findings and conclusions of the engagement exercise were presented to the Secretary of State last week. The Secretary of State and the Minister for Care Services released the presentation with clear interest in the recommendations, accompanied by an obvious enthusiasm for care reform. Those who claimed that the reform of adult social care was in the long grass, should start booking the mowers in for a service, just in case!