Enough is enough, broken social care system can no longer carry on as it is - Mike Padgham

For the first time in my 35 years in social care, I can feel unrest in the sector, a sense that enough is enough. Like a broken record, many of us in social care always say the same thing at this time of year, ‘the past 12 months have been tough, let’s hope for better this year’.

But this year it feels different. As we head into 2025 there is a mood in social care I have never experienced before. For the first time ever, providers are asking what action they can take to bring the Government to the table and persuade it to help the sector.

They have witnessed the activities of GPs, doctors, nurses, train drivers and, most vociferously, farmers protesting over changes to inheritance tax.

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Social care providers, reflecting on more than 30 years’ of frustration at a lack of reform, feel they are being left with no alternative but to take a stand.

Mike Padgham is the chair of the Independent Care Group. PIC: Richard PonterMike Padgham is the chair of the Independent Care Group. PIC: Richard Ponter
Mike Padgham is the chair of the Independent Care Group. PIC: Richard Ponter

We spent a lot of last year optimistically hoping that a change of Government would bring better fortunes for social care, only to have those aspirations, so far, cruelly frustrated.

The axing of the cap on care costs, cuts to care staff training and a lack of help in meeting the increase in Employer’s National Insurance Contributions have all left care providers angry.

The number of people going without care now exceeds two million but surveys suggest providers are going to exit the market and hand back contracts, risking a significant rise in that figure.

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At best that will exacerbate the current postcode rationing of care, at worst it could see vulnerable people forced to move home or being left in limbo.

If that alone is not sufficient to persuade ministers that it is time for action, then social care’s inability to provide the support needed to aid the Government’s NHS reforms surely should.

The Government’s three big shifts in its 10-year health plan include ‘from hospital to community’ and ‘from sickness to prevention’. The other is ‘from analogue to digital’. The first two rely on a sound social care sector if they are to succeed. We cannot improve prevention and have people cared for in the community if there is less and less social care available. Without reform of our sector, the 10-year NHS plan is doomed to failure.

But so far that possibility has not been enough to persuade the Government to reform social care. Like many before it, this administration continues to kick reform down the road with promises of a National Care Service and another Royal Commission on care coming sometime in the future.

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And it is this lack of urgency and apparent disinterest in care of the vulnerable that is making social care providers so angry.

They are starting to talk about action. But what does that mean? By its very nature, social care is a caring sector, looking after some of our communities’ most vulnerable people. Nobody would want to put their care at risk.

But the depth of feeling is currently becoming so strong that some providers are starting to think the unthinkable. To consider withholding the fees they pay to the Care Quality Commission or to refuse or hand back contracts or even to withdraw services.

Backed into a corner, even the most placid of animals will bare its teeth. As politicians enjoy their festive break, they would be well advised to remember that and to put reform of social care at the top of their New Year resolutions.

Mike Padgham is the chair of the Independent Care Group.

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