ADASS’s new President, Beverley Tarka’s keynote speech

It is a privilege to be speaking with you today on this platform. I am honoured and humbled to be taking on the Presidency of ADASS.

“Made in Haringey” was the title of a career talk I did some years ago, reflecting the fact that my career in social care started and developed over a period of 30 years with Haringey Council, a borough where I’ve lived off and on for almost 60 years and worked for over thirty years.

On reflection the title “Made in Haringey” told only part of my story. I fully support the perspective that the path we take on our career journey is shaped by personal experience. Many years before I embraced social care as a profession there were influences that I now recognise have helped shaped my career path. These influences I believe are my heritage – my mother the informal carer, and my own hands-on caring role.

I was born to parents of the Windrush generation and brought up until primary school age by grandparents on the island of Barbados, in the Caribbean, a familiar story for many of that generation. There were no social services. Extended family cared for children left behind. Some 20 years later when I lived and worked in Nigeria, the extended family provided care and support for my children. These are very positive memories.

David my youngest brother was born in 1968, with profound and multiple disabilities, (PMLD) the term we would use in social care to categorise his needs. To us as a family he has been been someone to cherish, love and care for and who gives us immense joy. In my family I grew up and saw first hand, the challenges of a system which meant constant struggles for the right support for over 50 years.

These personal experiences were my introduction to seeing the world through the lens of my mother, an “informal carer” and this has undoubtedly influenced my choice to pursue a career in social care, a path that has spanned some 30 years. This has also strengthened my resolve to shine a light this year of my presidency on the positive contribution informal carers make to society. Sheffield University in 2015 estimated that unpaid carers contribution to the economy across the UK is £132bn. Carers UK has estimated that during the pandemic it rose to £193bn or 530m a day. These are powerful statistics that tell their own story, and it’s right that ADASS as an organisation continues to listen to carers, highlight their stories, and work to support the identified aims and ambitions of carer organisations.

As a society we have asked a huge amount of carers, and during the pandemic we asked more again. They rose to the challenge – as they always do – but they are now utterly exhausted. We owe them not just our thanks, not just our respect, but real, meaningful support that will help them carry on and will give caring the status it deserves.

Before going on to highlight other areas of focus for ADASS in the coming year, I have often found it particularly useful to articulate what we mean by social care as it shapes the narrative about our ambitions for ADASS.

I firmly believe that social care is about fighting for social justice, for equality, saving and improving lives. It is about human kindness. The people who work in social care are courageous, committed, empowering and they give people hope.

ADASS gives us the opportunity to shape the narrative and not only to extol what is good about social care, but also what it is and what it could be, thereby entering the realm of true reform and the opportunity to shift the narrative in the public domain. Now that the government has reduced significantly the funding that supported its attempt at “Reform”, ADASS, alongside our partners in social care, must rise to the challenge of filling the gap and seize the opportunity to develop and promote our own narrative and ambition.

Sarah, our outgoing president, commissioned the roadmap “Time to Act” which has been co-produced with people with lived experiences and gives important perspectives that it is essential we take on board to help shape our response in terms of the priorities of ADASS as an organisation. Some important themes have emerged, and its useful to highlight a few areas:

First, we need to continue to draw on people’s experiences and the outcomes they want as an organising principle in terms of how we work.

Second, a shift in our narrative to a focus on prevention. Prevention is key to the reimagining of social care in the public domain. We need to expand our language so that we do not speak about “patients” or “recipients of social care”, but rather all our residents and extend our considerations and interventions before people are at the acute end of the system. Integrated Care systems provide an opportunity for us to work collaboratively with the NHS, voluntary sector and other partners as we all have the aim of reducing the pressure on acute care. However, this calls for a change away from the dominant government narrative aligned to hospital discharge, where social care is often maligned and cast as the root of system failures.

Social care is at its best when we work collaboratively with allies, carer organisations, people with lived experience and representative organisations. The roadmap “Time to Act” encapsulates all of these principles and I am pleased that I am able to continue to work alongside Sarah as immediate past president and the rest of ADASS and its regions to help shape next steps on this journey.

Thirdly, we need to articulate strongly the economic case for social care. Analysis for Skills for Care in 2021 put the direct economic contribution of Adult Social Care in England at £25.6bn (representative of a 1.6% contribution to the economy) which made it twice as big as agriculture. This 1.6% represents an increase on previous (2016 numbers) estimate of 1.4%, as Adult Social Care powered on through the pandemic while other sectors shrank. Adult Social Care is good for the economy in many ways. To highlight just a few: it’s labour intensive, it’s in every community and care workers spend most of their pay and spend it locally.

As an organisation, as exemplified by our recent membership survey, ADASS unanimously agree that our main aim is to influence government policy with regard to social care, closely followed by us developing social care policy. An area that scored less favourably was the ambition to influence public awareness and thinking about social care. This seems counterproductive as one would logically assume that the public awareness and championing of social care is directly linked to the ability to influence government policy. This then surely has to be a major focus for us going forward. With a general election looming within the next 18 months there is an ideal opportunity to showcase and raise awareness of social care with the public. Stories are powerful and I am reminded of our leadership conference 18 months ago, when the stage at Wyboston came alive with shared stories of people with lived experience, like the mother of a son who experienced mental ill health. She found support in her interaction with a local area co-ordinator in her community who helped her to continue to support her son and she then in turn was able to give back to her local community through befriending.

Members have also told us that sharing good practice and sector led improvement is also of significant importance to them and this cannot be over emphasised at a time when we are preparing for assurance. Improved support to members, including better links between the centre and regions, better leadership development and support, including support on assurance are primary goals of our organisation. There is an increasing refrain about the importance of data and evidence-based practice and preparation for assurance brings this into focus.

A recent achievement of ADASS was our survey two years ago highlighting significant waiting lists in social care as we strived to make widely known that social care is also like the NHS; going through a recovery period post-Covid pandemic. Many will infer that this information had some influence in government circles with the attention that resulted. We must continue to support members to embrace evidence-based practice particularly in this period when we are entering the assurance regime.

Assurance provides an ideal opportunity for us to focus on consideration of leadership. It is rightly the norm now to speak of inclusive leadership. How ADASS and its regions conduct our business and how we, as organisations are reflective of the communities we serve is paramount. Another of my priorities is to continue to focus on equalities, diversity and inclusion. How we work collaboratively with informal carers, people with lived experience, which I reference above, is key and instrumental in terms of how we conduct ADASS business. Improving the diversity of ADASS leadership and ensuring inclusivity is embedded in how we work are all laudable aims.

All of us have a role to play in developing and embedding inclusive leadership. My ambition is that this becomes synonymous when we speak of ADASS and our collaborative working with regions. I invite you all to join with me in defining what this means in practice. In saying this I am reminded of the African proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together.”

In this next year there is much to do but also an opportunity to pause, reflect. as well as consider how we take forward our priorities. How we do things is as important to me as what we do. How we live the values of social care and of ADASS the organisation. Ally ship is important. Ally ship with informal carers, people with lived experience, how we work through the lens of their perspectives and their lives. How we amplify, celebrate and support shared ambition. There is much to be daunted by in taking on the role of President, but also importantly much to look forward to in our continuing fight for social justice, rights and inclusion.