On the 5th May, the House of Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee published its report following the ‘Adult social care reform: the costs of inaction’ inquiry. While adult social care has been a policy area marked by complexity, delays and drift, the report makes the urgent need for reform clear, as colleagues across the Centre for Care and IMPACT have argued for in a recent editorial for the British Medical Journal. The report underscores that millions of people are not receiving the care and support they need to live well, as well as the mounting pressure on local authorities, care providers, the care workforce and unpaid carers. It makes a strong case for a need to not just to cost the resources needed for reform, but to capture the greater costs of maintaining the status quo. This includes not only the considerable economic costs, but also the wellbeing and opportunity costs experienced by people, which are unsustainable.
The Centre for Care submitted written evidence to this inquiry, and Research Associate Maria Petrillo was invited to present the ‘Costs of caring’ paper to the Committee in March. The report highlights that “unpaid carers are bearing the highest cost from successive governments’ failures to reform adult social care”. Our research has demonstrated the income penalty carers experience and the barrier young carers face, which contribute to a sense that they are an undervalued but integral part of the fabric of social care in the UK, providing care that is annually valued at £184bn. Our evidence submission also examined the reflections of carers from migrant and racially minoritized communities, where care across distance and previous experiences of institutionalised racism make receiving formal care support challenging.
The report also focuses on care workers as another key group who are undervalued, experiencing low pay and poor working conditions where positive change often feels out of reach or delayed. We strongly agree with the report’s conclusion that “it is both morally unacceptable, and economically shortsighted, that the current pay regime is pushing some into poverty”. It also addresses costs of inaction to the adult social care system and the wider support that surrounds it, including community groups. This ecosystem, as Centre for Care colleagues have highlighted, requires a careful balance but increasingly is under pressure and filling care gaps left by the state.
The report concludes, “The Government needs to fundamentally change how it views the social care sector, seeing it as an enabler and talking about it in those terms in the public debate – both for the invaluable service it provides to so many people and also as a driver of economic growth”. We endorse this underpinning ethos, and the urgent need for reform: the time for change is now.
We are delighted that the newly appointed Committee has prioritised adult social care for its first inquiry, and look forward to working with others in the sector to shift the narrative on care and ensure the Casey Commission succeeds where previous reform efforts have failed.
You can read the inquiry report here: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/47713/documents/249329/default/
You can read the Centre for Care’s submission to the inquiry here: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/132504/html/
About the Author
Kate Hamblin is Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Centre for Care. She joined the University of Sheffield in 2018 to work on the Sustainable Care programme. She also currently leads the Centre for Care’s Digital Care research theme and is the UK Networks and geographical lead for the North and East-Midlands in the IMProving Adult Care Together (IMPACT) evidence implementation Centre. She is also the Policy and Practice Liaison lead for the NIHR School for Social Care Research at the University of Sheffield.
Becky joined the Centre for Care in June 2022 as a Research Associate, working closely with Professor Sue Yeandle. Her role is to ensure that our research makes a difference to care policy, using our evidence to respond to parliamentary inquiries and government consultations across the four nations of the UK. This will include working closely with the team to gather evidence on critical and emerging issues in care, as well as synthesising the grey and academic literature and engaging with our partners in the care sector.
