A third of councils are not confident of being able to meet all their legal duties under the Care Act 2014 by 2025/26 – a decade after the introduction of the landmark legislation, designed to improve access to vital care and support.
Last autumn, Skills for Care announced ambitious plans to develop a new and comprehensive workforce strategy for adult social care.
The next government has been urged to make social care a priority after years of reform being “consistently dodged or delayed”, a think-tank has said.
The Government is being urged to extend the Household Support Fund (HSF) to help protect vulnerable households across the UK.
The Government has announced a new ‘care workforce pathway’, providing the first national career structure for adult social care staff.
For a number of councils, the taking down this month of office Christmas decorations may well be swiftly followed by the putting up of flipcharts, timelines and checklists on office walls.
New social care assessments are time and energy-intensive and have created additional workload for councils, which needs to be funded, the LGA has said.
Four of the five local authorities helping pilot new adult social care assessments have been given ‘good’ indicative ratings by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Around 390,000 adult social care staff left their jobs last year – with about a third of them leaving the sector altogether, according to the strategic workforce development and planning body in England.
Plans to introduce ‘single word’ inspection ratings for adult social care services should be dropped, as they set local councils up “to fail”.