Care England Responds to Covid-19 Inquiry Social Care Report

Care England recognises the profound experiences of people receiving care, their families, care workers and providers throughout the pandemic, as stated in the UK Covid-19 Inquiry’s Module 6 report.

The report reinforces what the sector has said consistently: adult social care is too often treated as an afterthought rather than as an equal part of the health and care system. The priority now must be to ensure that the Inquiry’s findings lead to practical, funded and measurable change.

Care providers must have a formal place in future emergency planning and decision-making from the outset. Hospital discharge will always be an important part of an integrated health and care system, but pressure must never again be relieved in one part of the system by transferring unmanaged risk into another. Future discharge arrangements must be supported by timely information, appropriate testing and isolation arrangements, clinical support, PPE, sufficient workforce capacity and funding.

The Inquiry’s recommendations on visiting, regulatory oversight, end-of-life care and better data are also critical, but implementation must reflect the realities of care delivery across a diverse sector. Visiting arrangements must balance infection prevention with people’s rights and recognise families as well as care workers. The care workforce should be recognised, along with the whole sector, as an equal partner in health and care, with the funding needed to back it up.

Regulation during an emergency should remain proportionate and sensitive to the circumstances in which providers are operating, not be absent. Future preparedness must recognise the diversity of adult social care, including residential and nursing care, homecare, supported living, services for people with learning disabilities and autistic people, personal assistants, direct-payment arrangements and unpaid carers. The sector must not again be treated as a single homogeneous system or simply older people.

Professor Martin Green OBE, Chief Executive of Care England, said:

“The central lesson from this report is that adult social care cannot again be expected to carry national risk without the authority, information, resources and clinical support needed to manage it safely.

 

“Pressure in hospitals must never again be relieved by transferring unmanaged risk into adult social care. Providers need to be part of emergency planning from the beginning, and national resilience must be properly funded directly to where the costs were incurred rather than passed down as another cost to individual services.

 

“The Inquiry’s recommendations are essential, but the real test now is implementation. The government should be clear about who owns each action, how it will be funded, when it will be delivered, and how we will know that preparedness has genuinely improved.

 

“We should not wait for wider reform through the Casey Commission to act on lessons that are already clear. There is a great deal that can and should be done now.

Care England will continue to work with the Department of Health and Social Care through the Adult Social Care Pandemic Action Plan to ensure the Inquiry’s findings are translated into practical action.

Professor Martin Green concluded:

“Six years on, the question is whether adult social care would be materially better prepared if another pandemic occurred tomorrow. The government must now demonstrate that it would be.”