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Last week, the UK Government announced its new NHS 10 Year Plan, outlining an ambitious vision to shift the focus of healthcare across three key areas: from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention.
The National Care Forum (NCF), the voice of not-for-profit social care providers in the UK, has welcomed the plan’s ambitions—but also raised serious concerns about the role and readiness of the adult social care sector in delivering this vision.
Vic Rayner, CEO of NCF, said:
“We welcome the NHS 10 Year Plan’s focus on neighbourhood delivery as communities are where much of social care and support has always taken place in supporting individuals and their families to live well. It is imperative for the successful implementation of the shift from hospitals to community that adult social care is baked into these plans from the outset. Also essential is that adult social care providers take their place at the heart of multidisciplinary teams and are viewed as equal partners with the NHS; this dynamic will be crucial in creating the community focus on taking joined up care closer to the people who need it, which appears to be the fundamental change that the 10 Year Plan is seeking to achieve.
“The plan includes increasing responsibilities for care professionals so that they can carry out more healthcare tasks including issuing medication, checking blood pressure and wound dressing. We support the ambition of an increased recognition of the role of care workers in delivering integrated health and care tasks, framed around people’s needs, but this can only work if the funding, training and support flows with the additional responsibilities.
“The vision to deliver more care closer to home and put a stronger focus on prevention makes sense, but we have significant concerns around how adult social care is to be enabled to contribute fully to the 10 Year Plan while the sector remains so fragile. The need for reform and investment has never been greater and we urge government to think carefully about the investment and culture change that need to be in place in order for adult social care to be at the heart of this new world and not be forgotten or overlooked as plans begin to be implemented.
“The current Covid Inquiry module 6 proceedings are painting a worrying portrait of the damage caused by the power imbalance between health and care in policy making and policy implementation. It is vital that adult social care is seen as an equal partner, with a leadership role in neighbourhood delivery and the local expertise, community knowledge and strong connections that care and support providers nurture are brought to the fore to create the strongest possible deliverables for communities."
You can read the full Government NHS 10 Year Plan here
The NCF is the leading association for not-for-profit social care.
NCF brings together more than 170 of the UK’s leading social care organisations, representing large numbers of care providers, offering thousands of services across the country, which are not for profit and always at the heart of community provision. Collectively, these organisations deliver more than £2.3 billion of social care and support to more than 277,000 people. The NCF membership body collectively employs more than 124,000 staff and 14,000 volunteers.
More information is available on the National Care Forum at www.nationalcareforum.org.uk.
@NCFCareForum @vicrayner @NCF_Liz
NCF called on the new government to take action to support social care in their “Social care must haves policy document”, published in summer 2024.
BCOP is a member of NCF.