Melanie Williams reflects on her year as President of ADASS 

From leading debates on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and building a relationship with a new government to developing a toolkit on tech-enabled care and shining a light on young people preparing for adulthood, Melanie Williams discusses her presidency highlights.

As my tenure as ADASS President draws to a close, I find myself reflecting on an extraordinary year filled with both challenges and triumphs. Leading this esteemed association has been an immense pleasure. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have represented our members and have had such fun getting to know new people, pushing myself to do new things, and learning so much. I’m delighted to be handing the presidency over to Jess McGregor, who will be an incredible successor, as quite honestly, I need the rest!

Advocacy and influencing highlights

One of the highlights of my year was an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, which followed the Government’s announcement of adult social care reform in January 2025. It was an incredible moment for the sector following years of us feeling invisible. With the mainstream media fighting for our attention, I could not pass up the chance to talk to the largely female audience of Women’s Hour, given how many women work in social care and have caring roles. The programme’s producers contacted me afterwards to say that they had so much engagement from their listeners, and I was pleased to have been part of that.

With a new government, advocacy and policy has been central. With a new Secretary of State and Care Minister to get to know, it’s been vital to cement relationships with their officials as well as engaging with wider government, advisers and influencers. Getting time with Wes Streeting and Stephen Kinnock is difficult as they have such a packed agenda, but I’m confident I’ve made the most of my time with them and that I’ve developed their confidence in ADASS as a source of support and challenge.

Relationship with the NHS and partners

I don’t need to tell anyone in social care that our relationship with the NHS is crucial and that we invest a large amount in it. I’ve also had the chance to contribute to big reform areas such as the NHS 10-year plan’s vision and the work to shape early thinking on neighbourhood health. ADASS will need some agility in building relationships with NHSE and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) as the recent changes start to take shape. The relationship we’ve built with colleagues such as Tom Riordan, Second Permanent Secretary at DHSC and the DHSC Directors who work in the health teams will help with this, but this will continue to feature as a priority.

Alongside NHS reform, there’s also work around understanding the impact on social care of wider changes, such as Local Government Reorganisation and welfare reform. We hope the Baroness Casey led Independent Commission on adult social care will help deliver greater social justice for people through social care. I’ve laid a path for our engagement in this, I hope.

Building an understanding of social care across our partners is key to influencing both them and social care policy. I’ve had a good profile in the MJ, and great support from the trade press through the years sharing my thoughts on our threats and opportunities. Our partners have welcomed me at their summits, conferences, roundtables and policy events. My favourite topic was at the Kings Fund titled – Social Care and the NHS, best friends or always fighting? The health and social care interface was also a topic at the HSJ Summit, Nuffield Trust event, and key to supporting NHS Confed with their policy work on neighbourhood health. It has been a joy to share practice or pose a challenge to an audience who have fixed views about what social care is.

Preparation for Adulthood

Preparation for Adulthood has been an important piece of work both personally, as my youngest son was preparing to leave special school for college, and professionally as I didn’t realise how important it was to others, or what a difference it could make. I knew that councils were not always getting behind this issue effectively and that the outcomes for people are too often poor. The County Councils Network (CNN) report highlighted the patterns of support, cost and growth of support for working age adults with a disability last year (2024).

IMPOWER’s partnership with ADASS to support this work has been excellent, helping to pull together people and ideas. I was also thrilled to share this work with Andy Smith, former President of the Association of Directors Children’s Social Care (ADCS) which allowed me to build greater links with our colleagues there.

I’ve had so many amazing reactions to the fact that the ADASS and ADCS Presidents are aligned and working together on an area, and that a DASS is speaking about young people growing into adults. As a leader, these unintended consequences of impact have taken me by surprise, and I hope that in ADASS and ADCS we can learn from that.

Andy and I chaired a conference for practitioners looking at the transition from childhood to adulthood with our Principal Social Workers network showing a real energy for this. Many actions we need to take are in our control. For those things outside our control which include policy, legislation, healthcare practice, we now have cross government interest in looking at this. Whilst the driver for this is largely financial as they can see the alarming data trajectories for spend, I’ve real hope that we can bring about some positive change to enable people to grow up successfully which is not too much to ask at all.

Building Stronger Networks

I’ve continued to support ADASS to grow as a visible, accountable, engaging and collaborative organisation. How we work has been a core focus of the Trustees and Executive team this year. Through my blogs and at our events, I’ve been able to share my passion for social care and social justice, and I really hope members and partners have felt my passion for collaboration too.

Visiting each ADASS region was such a useful experience as I learnt so much about what other places were doing. A special thanks go to the East Region who took me to dinner and brought me back to my home ground. I visited the Northeast for the first time and met so many other DASSs over teams. I remain optimistic that our work with the regions will continue to develop.

I’m proud of the progress that ADASS has made in our relationships with people with lived experience and the way we’ve strengthened our work with TLAP and Social Care Futures.  We’ve improved representation from people drawing on care and support at our events, as well as those expert at challenging our thinking. The work I started here has longevity with a group developing ADASS’s approach and this being a priority for my successors, Jess McGregor and Phil Holmes.

We’ve convened sector voices through the Time to Act group established when ADASS published Time to Act and through different leadership forums with social care influencers. As President, there were countless relationships to manage and working with policy leads and our executive team is the only way to manage them successfully. It was important for me to visibly support Skills for Care’s Workforce Strategy, given how central workforce is to our success. Also, in the face of the pressures on providers, exacerbated by NICS and the budget last year, relationships with our provider organisations have been a feature too.

It’s been important to me that as a membership association we increase our support and accountability for our members. I really hope the feedback gathered through my regional visits can be seen in the membership pack we are launching at our Spring seminar event this year.

Growing Knowledge

Investing in Technology Enabled Care (TEC) and evidencing prevention are two real challenges for me as a Director. Making the case for moving investment away from formal care is intuitive and we know this is what is needed, but when under significant pressure to pay for care packages, it is often difficult for us and our teams to build and evidence business cases.

Given this, I was pleased to co-chair a commission with the TSA (Technology Services Association) alongside Sir David Pearson, to develop a practical output that will help DASSs and their teams navigate this area. Sometimes, we can produce reports that are useful, but not used, so I’m hopeful that the toolkit, we’ll launch at our Spring Seminar 2025, will be used. 

Looking Ahead

As Immediate Past President, I will have the joy of supporting Jess through her presidential year and welcoming Phil to the presidential team, but I will take a background role. The foundation we’ve built together is strong, and I’m confident that our association will continue to thrive. I encourage all members to remain engaged, to push boundaries, and to never lose sight of our mission to improve lives through exceptional social care.

In conclusion, my year as ADASS President has been a remarkable journey. I’m deeply grateful for the support and collaboration of our members, and I look forward to witnessing the continued success of our association.

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