Day two from ADASS Spring Seminar 2023: New President’s speech

New ADASS President, Beverley Tarka, opened the second day of Spring Seminar with a powerful speech about her experience as a carer and the work she’s been doing in Haringey for more than thirty years to improve care and support for people in her community.

She outlined her priorities as President in 2023/24 including a focus on improving support for unpaid carers, involving people more effectively in decisions about their care and how care and support is provided in their community and using the new Roadmap as a tool to build support for a transformation of adult social care in England. When Government asks us how problems can be solved and how we can improve care, we now have the practical action plan on how to make it happen.

She warned though that we won’t be able to influence Government or secure the long-term investment social care needs without building the public’s support for social care. We need to share more stories about what care does, she said, so people can see it’s about all of us, our mums and dads, wider family and friends.

Beverley also said we won’t get the investment unless we make it clear how much of an impact good quality care has on the economy. For example, the second most common reason why people can’t work is because of their caring responsibilities, barriers to work as well as the economic impact of the whole social care workforce show why investment will pay back on top of improving vital care and support for people.

Improving how social care and community health care work together

Beverley was followed by a lively and challenging session grappling with how to improve how social care, primary, community and health services work together to support people.

Professor Adam Gordon, President of the British Geriatrics Society, said that there was an opportunity to shift thinking in the NHS about the vital role of social care and for both to work better together. He called for a right to rehabilitation and recovery, that should drive care support for people when they leave hospital. Louise Jackson, Health and Care Policy Manager at Age UK, said that there was a need for more joint working with voluntary organisations to improve the wrap-around care and support people needed in their communities.

While Anna Severwright, Convenor of Social Care Future, talked about the need for people to be seen and asked what they need to drive how care and health services work together to provide care and support. Anna said that in the past ten years though she’s had good health and social care support not once has somebody asked her what she wants from life and how they could help her get that.

Andy Bell, Chief Executive of the Centre for Mental Health, reminded the audience of the dire situation that many people with mental health needs face. He said the life expectancy gap for people with mental health needs has widened in the past few years and there are people with autism and learning disabilities held in hospital for months or years because we can’t provide the care they need to live independently, infringing their liberty. He called for holistic mental health support and a focus on early prevention tackling the causes of poor mental health.

When asked what key changes are needed to improve health and social care the panel said: pay people properly, put care and health workers in the same place in communities where they can work together to get things done and stop calling people patients and service-users, see the person, provide what they need.

Minister’s message and Shadow Social Care Minister’s speech

Unfortunately, Social Care Minister, Helen Whately MP, wasn’t able to join the Spring Seminar, but she sent a message thanking social care leaders for their work. She talked about the next steps on Government reform including workforce support, digitisation and ensuring care is provided in the right place for people, for most people that means at home. She encouraged people to take part in the government’s consultation on a new pathway for care workers. The consultation closes on 31 May 2023.

Shadow Social Care Minister, Liz Kendall MP, followed with her keynote speech welcoming the Roadmap that ADASS published the day before and outlining Labour’s five commitments to transform social care:

1. Commitment to realise a shared vision for care as expressed by social care future: we all want to live in a place called home, with the people and things we love, in communities where we look out for one another, doing things that matter to us.
2. Home first: building a care and support system that helps people to stay living independently at home for as they want.
3. A new deal for people who work in social care: including proper pay and conditions.
4. Long-term thinking, not short-termism and securing the investment social care needs through making the economic case for care.
5. Local leadership and accountability, so that care is designed locally with people who draw on care at the heart of those decisions.
   She concluded, our goal should be one person, one budget, one team – that’s what people want not navigating a complex system of different services. That’s the sort of care reform we need.

Workforce reform

Following Liz Kendall MP, Sarah Blackmore from Social Work England, talked to delegates about how we solve the social care staffing crisis. Her key message was social care is one profession – both those working with adults and children – and we need to unite to improve conditions for all social work professionals.

Sponsors workshops and regional speed-dating

Much of the rest of the day delegates spent hearing some great practice and case studies from partners who sponsored the Spring Seminar this year and who work with social care teams to improve support. And also hearing good practice ideas from each other as the regional ADASS teams swapped stories about what they’ve been doing to improve support in their areas.