ADASS’s new President: Jess McGregor’s keynote speech

Good morning everyone.

Looking around this room, I see the best of public service—people of deep care, insight and commitment.    It’s humbling to step into this role knowing how much collective strength and wisdom we hold between us. It’s a real privilege to stand here as the ADASS President, representing you.

I also want to acknowledge the Presidents who’ve gone before me. Working alongside Mel, Bev, and Sarah has been an absolute privilege. Their clarity, compassion, and courage have not only transformed ADASS but have also shaped the policy landscape in which we now work.

And I must mention Camden, the place I have worked for the past 5 years. A place full of love, rebellious spirit, and radical hope. A place where power is shared, and imagination and humanity are part of the job. A place where we say: ‘To love is to act.’ And those words will guide me over the next year.

But what really excites me about these next 12 months is the opportunity to spend time with all of you— please invite me to come and visit, I want to learn from your work. Our strength comes not from a single voice, but from all of us—asking questions, learning together, and always striving to do better.

I started work in homelessness and housing, and remember being shocked by how little support people had when things went wrong.  I was young, idealistic, and determined to change that.

Looking back, it seems like a moment of relative plenty. Supporting People funding was just beginning, Drug treatment services were expanding. There was optimism. But even then, it wasn’t working for everyone.

The people I worked with were often on the edges of everything—outside of eligibility, outside the systems meant to help, often outside of care altogether, and almost always lonely.

Three stories in particular have stayed with me. Stories where I felt compelled to act, but where the system failed.

I met Barry because he was in rent arrears and facing eviction but quickly learnt that his flat had been taken over by drug dealers,and his benefits stolen every week. Cuckooing wasn’t recognised in the way it is now. He was told his learning difficulties didn’t meet the threshold for social care, and he was too young for other kinds of support. He didn’t seem to fit anywhere.

Jennifer was in her 70s. Her mental health had declined since retirement, and she’d been collecting things she found on the street but her flat was now bursting full and unsafe. Adult social care had referred her to us, saying they’d discharged her because she wouldn’t open the door. Eventually, we moved from talking to her through the letterbox to being invited in for a cup of tea. She told us about her life as a journalist and the objects she’d been collecting. She wanted help—but thought no one really cared.

And Aoife. Living alone, depressed, spiralling into debt and drinking to cope. I remember helping her decorate her bedroom when she said, “I just want to get better and get back to work.” But the mental health team wouldn’t assess her until she stopped drinking. Once again, she was stuck.

So I did what I could. I built trust. Made cups of tea. Kept turning up. Worked the system as best I could. Some solutions worked. Many didn’t. And over time, I began to understand what it means to need help and not get it—not in policy terms, but in real life.

It left me with a real curiosity: Who isn’t getting what they need?

And a determination to do the right thing—even when the system made it hard.

Local government and Adult Social Care has always allowed me to do that. Alongside all the challenges, I have also had the freedom to make positive change. To work hand in hand with people who need care to be better, to imagine something different—and try to make it real.

So what does Adult Social Care mean to me?

Adult Social Care is about people— about all of us.

It’s about ageing. About caring. About love and being there for one another.

It’s about the relationships that sustain us. The places we call home. The lives we all want to lead.

For me, social care is the glue that helps us assemble all of that into our own perfect collage of a life.

It holds lives together. It holds communities together. It connects people to the lives they want. It fills gaps. It reinforces, repairs—and can even create something entirely new.

But when that glue is spread too thinly, lives start to come apart.

I am sure that this resonates with all of you.

When we tell that story clearly—when we help people understand what social care is and why it matters—it connects.

That’s why I’m so proud of our Care Can’t Wait campaign. It doesn’t just talk about crisis—it explains what care is, why it matters, and how it could be better. As you saw from Abbie yesterday – we’re not just describing what’s broken—we’re offering glimpses of the future.

But right now, we all know, that too many people are not getting what they need.

And I know that like me, many of you will be having sleepless nights about this. Worried about people needing what we can’t give them. Worried about how this affects our staff.

Going without care, without enough care, or without the right care is not the exception—it’s becoming the norm. And that should shame us.

We know that too many older people are isolated, struggling, forgotten.

We know that carers around the country are unsupported, exhausted and struggling.

And we know that disabled people are increasingly doubly disabled by a health and social care system that is stretched too thin.

My beautiful friend Joe was 17 when he died, just before the pandemic. He needed round the clock care for this whole life. An integrated personal budget made that happen, and supported his family too. But then his Continuing Health Care funding was cut. Too much of the last year of Joe’s life involved his family worried about whether he would get the care he needed and how they would cope.

And I know, that there are many people who give up even trying to get help. Who we don’t hear from at all.

That is why we need action, and hope

We all need to act in hope.

Because To love is to act.

Those are Victor Hugo’s words—but for me, they speak to the heart of social care. They remind me of the humanity in the work we all do, and that by acting we bring about change.

They also remind me of the agency that we all have to make things better. Funding, or the lack of it, matters, but so does our vision.

What kind of system do we want to build.

One that waits for crisis—or one that prevents it?

One that gatekeeps—or one that connects?

When we support someone, listen, share power, create change—we are putting love into action.

Where I work, that might look like a family group conference helping someone stay at home.

Or a citizens’ assembly setting expectations for how care should work locally.

It might look like rewriting the commissioning rules so small, community providers can thrive.

These may seem small—but they are deeply radical. They shift power. Change relationships. Open up possibility.

That’s the work that inspires me. That’s the work I want to shine a light on.

But I want to hear your stories. Learn about your small changes, see your glimpses of the future.

In the year ahead, I’ll focus on three things.

First,

I want to come to see you— I want to hear about the community solutions you’re proud of, the preventative partnerships you’ve built, and the barriers we need to break down. Your stories will shape my work.

Second,

I’ll nurture our relationships with government and prioritise supporting the new Casey Commission. I won’t shy away from our challenges, but I won’t let them define us. I’ll bring forward your ideas—and ensure that our contributions are rooted in the reality of both your experiences and your solutions.

Third,

I’ll help us change our story. We need the public to understand what care really is, and to want something better for themselves and their families. This is about more than policy—it’s about culture, imagination, and belief.

All of our experiences—mine and yours, show the power of coming together.

We have an extraordinary opportunity to gather our collective strength, embrace our allies, and build a movement for change. But it has to be rooted in hope.

We all know the dominant story about social care: pressure, erosion, crisis, disproportionality.

And it’s true. But it’s not the whole story.

Because every day, we see something else: moments of joy.  Of pride.  Of connection.  Of breathtaking humanity.

I know I’m not the only one who’s been moved to tears by the beauty of this work. Or overwhelmed with pride at what our teams achieve.

Our job is to make those moments the norm.

There are 1.5 million people working in adult social care. An incredibly diverse workforce of care workers, social workers, occupational therapists, personal assistants, commissioners, outreach workers, nurses, peer support workers..

There 5 million unpaid carers.

There are over 1 million people drawing on support.

Just imagine what we could do if every single one of them felt seen, heard, valued, supported—every single day.

We need to turn up the volume on the stories we’re proudest of. Not a story rooted in deficit—but in possibility.

Let’s use our collective privilege, power, and love to make change happen.

To love is to act.

And together, that’s exactly what we’ll do