Slow progress on National Care Service ‘source of profound regret’
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Health secretary’s adult social care reforms will not ‘substantially benefit’ older people for up to another decade. Care experts are calling on the government to act urgently on reform of adult social care after it was revealed that long-awaited proposals may not be delivered for another three years.
![[Councils can no longer afford all carers’ costs, according to the Homecare Association]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/02/20/newFile-6.jpg)
Ministers have announced the first step towards creating a National Care Service to ease the workload of the NHS. A new package of support for the sector includes more funding for elderly and disabled people to make home improvements and stay out of hospital.
At the same time, health secretary Wes Streeting announced an independent commission led by Baroness Louise Casey would begin in the spring. The first phase, reporting next year, will recommend medium-term reforms, and the second, expected by 2028, will advise on longer-term reforms.
Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said reform was long overdue, but that even if all went well, it would be the early 2030s before older people received any substantial benefit – 30 years after Japan and Germany modernised their social care systems.
“That’s a source of profound regret and it leaves today’s older people and their families to make the best of a system widely agreed to be letting many down,” she said. The Homecare Association, which represents employers of carers who visit people at home, said the announcements “could finally close the doom loop social care reform has been stuck in for too long”.
