ADASS’s new President, Melanie Williams’ keynote speech

It is with a sense of excitement, a little disbelief, and certainly with a huge amount of pride that I take up the Presidency of ADASS.

We have an incredible impact on people in our communities. Particularly on people who face significant challenges in living a gloriously ordinary life, with the same freedoms and human rights that everyone deserves to expect in their life.

My commitment to social justice for people that draw on our support will be writ large through my presidential year.

Firstly, I would like to thank Beverley, our outgoing president, who alongside being a great mentor and source of support for me personally, has challenged and provoked us at ADASS to lead for equality and diversity. Who as our first black president has been our inspiration for inclusive leadership and has set an expectation for ADASS for how we will work into the future, which I fully intend to mirror.

Our strength as a community of Directors of Adult Services and social care leaders is in our ability to embrace different experiences, different perspectives, and to challenge ourselves to create an environment where we nurture our diverse leadership.

In Nottinghamshire, we were an early pilot of the Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard, the WRES, and it taught me two things –

One, that we have such a long way to go to achieve parity of experience of colleagues with protected characteristics from those who do not.

Two – that structural and systemic transformation is possible with simple steps

The first step being openness about the problem through data.

Reading the recent report on learning from the SCWRES was an emotional rollercoaster for me through shock, anger, shame and then a determination to act. These experiences within our own workforce are simply not good enough.

Within ADASS, we lack the meaningful data to move beyond the talk on how important EDI is to us as leaders. You, as Members, have challenged ADASS to do more. Doing more starts with accountable leadership and I intend to advance our approach to equality. The next step is in fully understanding where we are so we can be clear about where we need to be. One small step you can support with is in completing your equality monitoring data return as we remain stubbornly stuck with low response rates. And in doing so we can accept the challenge you have given and follow the path Beverly has laid.

But, now let me tell you a bit about my professional journey and how practice has shaped my views.

I am proud to work in social care.

I have held the hand of a person and supported them to die with love and dignity.

I have given someone warm and clean clothes when they had none.

I introduced someone to money after 20 years in hospital and not being allowed to have any.

I have supported a mum to take small steps to be able to get up and dressed on time to walk their child to school every day so they could stay together.

I have sat with someone who was determined to take their life and heard them tell me why.

I have had cat litter thrown at me as we removed a person from their home.

I can remember each of these people clearly and their experiences added to my own, shaping the leader I am today.

Within Social Care we need to feel confident in sharing our sense of pride and celebrate the small things we do each day.

I started in part-time care work at 17, youth work at 18, and my first full-time social care job at 20. I had no aspirations to be ADASS president and as a young adult, I had no idea that I was shaping a life-long career in health and social care. An endeavour I received very little support or opportunity to do. Too few people who come into adult social care are encouraged and enabled to build a career. In a way I have been fortunate to do so.

This is why we desperately need a new deal for the care workforce – not just fair pay, but a real career structure and meaningful incentives for young people to come into care and support work from school, college or university and to stay.

Care work has changed radically in my time. I can remember my first few days, I was completely clueless. No real skill or technique, but a drive to care for people, making sure they were well looked after, and were happy. Memories of tea trolleys and care as a good service.

We still care, but now we have knowledge, evidence-based practice, researched approaches and techniques, technology, equipment, and a system of legislation (although much of it still needing reform) that guides our practice to be informed, placing the person at the centre.

Workforce will remain our priority and as we work alongside Skills for Care in shaping the new Workforce Strategy, we will ensure our registered professionals and wider care workforce in all their guises has the pay, recognition, wellbeing support, and importantly the career pathways they deserve.

We remain caring and compassionate, but most importantly in those years I have learnt that it is not my definition of happy and care that counts, it is about achieving what happy means for each person and co-production in all we do will remain our goal.

It is great to see how as ADASS we are embracing coproduction in the way we work and it is now our practice to welcome people with lived experience to this event, playing an active and important part to shape our thinking and policy.

Turning to inclusion and member engagement, I hope you have heard about the work that ADASS has undertaken in the last six months to review the way we work as a charity. Trustees have sought to understand the experience of being an ADASS Member in order to change the way we influence and go about our business. We want to harness the power of our members and networks, amplify your different and diverse voices, and get this heard by Government. I can provide leadership to ADASS to do that, but it will take your commitment to make it work. The Membership review is about all of us building our collective voice, and making ADASS an indispensable part of what enables you to do the day job.

Our aim is to build a culture that celebrates the impact that you have in social care painting a picture of the difference we collectively make. To build a strong narrative reflecting the stories from our places, and that is well understood with policy makers and wider public alike.

Beverley launched the Carers Challenge last year driven by her passion for greater recognition and support for the role of informal carers. Through this work, ADASS has taken great strides to build the alliances that we need to continue to inspire people to draw attention to carers and what is needed to make a difference to their experiences. There’s a lot of great practice out there. The Carers Challenge has brought it together so we can learn from each other and drive positive change for carers across the country.

We all heard from East Sussex colleagues yesterday. Their innovative project using art, photography and poetry to give carers an opportunity to develop their skills and express their feelings and creativity was great. It showed how important it is for us to work with carers to help them balance their lives, so that they can continue to give their time. And there is such a diversity of other ideas and projects on the new Supporting Carers Hub, which I know will continue to grow and help you to improve the support we provide to carers in our communities.

Carers will remain a priority for us. 91% of Directors stated in the spring survey that unpaid carers are coming forward with an increased level of need. That carer burnout is the main driver of family breakdown. Enabling carers to care through carers leave, support when it is needed most, and navigating our systems with digitally enabled access, are core to our priorities this coming year.

I don’t consider myself a carer, but I am a Mum and a Mum who has additional parenting duties for one of my teenage sons. Whilst being a working Mum has made me who I am today – (ruthless time manager, highly organised and incredibly proud of my kids) at times I have also felt exhausted, overwhelmed, and frustrated by the systems we rely on to keep me in work and my son in school. It has been a struggle! As we face this next stage of moving into adulthood, I do so with huge anxiety given the stories I hear from those parents we support. All too often we don’t do enough to plan ahead in a timely way and make that transition successful.

We end up working to resolve problems that we have actually created ourselves in our own councils. Therefore, it is so important that we support the ambitions of Association of Directors of Children’s Services to reform Special Education Needs and Disabilities. I am so pleased to be sharing a priority with Andy Smith, incoming ADCS president, to ensure these reforms jointly build a system of support for the transition into adulthood.

We can work with our DCS colleagues to create systems of support that are sustainable through people’s lives, giving better outcomes through school and then into early adulthood.

Each ADASS president brings their own ambitions for their year of office, and it will be no surprise to those of you that know me, that I will emphasise our commitment to social justice. As well as reducing, preventing and delaying need, we care about prevention because it is core to redistributing health and wealth to those whose lives are challenged the most, by reason of their social care need.

Too often social care is seen through the lens of hospital discharge. For example, a report from the NHS Confederation in 2022 showed that 80% of NHS leaders claimed adult social care capacity was the biggest impact on urgent care demand. The political focus on hospital discharge is disproportionate. We know that 4 in 5 requests for our support comes from the community.

Even worse, social care is seen as part of the NHS. At best about care home support for older people. This isn’t just about us wanting to be seen and heard and having recognition in Adult Social Care, this is an issue of social justice for the thousands of adults we support.

Our Spring Survey has told us that we still spend the most on working age adults, but with less confidence that we are meeting our wellbeing and prevention duties. And it said that we lack confidence that we can invest in care closer to home in the way we would like.

We see the NHS buckling and using emergency and urgent care increasingly to provide healthcare.

We see each year a significant increase of requests for mental health act as the NHS increases it use of detention.

NHS England say there is an increasing number of people with autism admitted to hospital for support, despite the success we have had in social care in supporting discharge from long-stay hospitals.

We have worked to change our narrative on risk in adult safeguarding by recognising the risk of self-neglect and self-harm where need is cumulative. And at the same time have seen partners under pressure to provide access to basic support such as housing, healthcare, and income.

Therefore, our ADASS focus on building personalised and community support closer to home must remain.

We will advocate for the capital investment needed to build sustainable all-age support.

And we will advocate for the work of the Integrated Care System to enable funding flows both for prevention of crisis, and recovery from crisis when it occurs.

This capital investment needs to address the digital and technology we need to improve care.

We will continue to share more stories of the diverse lives of people we support and through coproduction continue to give credibility to a more assertive ADASS.

The Care Act celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.

I do remember the mood from 10 years ago very differently. We shared great optimism about the Care Act. It was so exciting to bring together the vast and complicated system of welfare policy and legislation that we had, but our excitement went beyond that. We felt we had a new dawn of equality and social justice for people.

When it comes to policy, funding, and cross-Government action, we have had a decade of disappointment since. We have rightly come to the conclusion that we have to make our own weather and that we can have real impact. You heard yesterday about the launch of Time to Act 12 months ago, and that we wanted to set out our vision of reform. Hearing from those around us we know this has been well received. Leveraging our partnerships and relationships will enable us to be bolder in our challenge and influence this year.

The key issue that many of you have raised with me, that was repeated through our surveys, is that we need greater challenge of the government, our systems and status quo. Being in the tent is crucial for us in negotiating policy and funding with our DHSC colleagues. And at the same time we can challenge, encourage and nurture a debate on adult social care, bringing forward our energy from the Care Act to negotiate a reform agenda that brings about social justice and maximise the impact we make.

But we’ve been here before. Politicians make promises about reforming social care and then don’t fulfil them. To build sustained political backing to transform care and support in England, we not only need the trust of decision-makers in Government and their confidence that the solutions we’re proposing will work. We need to the change the way the public thinks about social care. So that they see it as important to them and their families’ wellbeing as the NHS, even if they don’t need support right now.

That’s why we’re working with Social Care Future, the LGA, TLAP and other allies to build a movement to do that. And every one of you is going to be a leader in that movement.

You are social care. You and your teams improve lives in some of the most difficult circumstances every day.

I’m proud of that – and pride in what we do in adult social care is something I want to see us reclaim and reassert.

Despite the cuts in real funding that we have taken and absorbed in the past 15 years, every day we still deliver care and support to over 835 thousand people.

We could do more.– there are almost half a million people waiting for assessment, for care and support to commence or for a direct payment. This is indefensible.

We look to next government finally to grasp the nettle of lasting reform. We must use every opportunity presented by the coming general election campaign to put the cause of adult social care in the spotlight and our politicians on the spot.

We face this challenge with ADASS operations in good shape. We have invested in the team. We are strengthening links with regions. We have built strong alliances with many of our colleagues joining us this week.

Lastly, I want to give thanks to those that have supported me in being here. Colleagues who helped me shape my priorities and focus, previous DASS’s who encouraged and mentored me. I want to thank Bev, and the current ADASS Trustee team as well.

Thanks to Notts CC for releasing me and being so pleased for me to take on the role.

As well as recognising the incredible support I get from the ADASS team, I especially want to pay tribute to Cathie who has done so much to deliver this last 10 years and is stepping down in the summer.

We have worked hard in the last six months as Trustees and Executive Team in progressing the key reviews of how we work. I welcome the support from Anna in helping to make this happen and I hope you can see how we have listened to your feedback and reflections about ADASS.

ADASS is growing in profile and influence. It is a privilege to be asked to lead it on next stage of journey and at such a critical juncture. I hope you will all work with me to ensure we continue to raise our profile and influence, and more importantly, the profile and influence of adult social care and the needs of all those who draw on it.