New reforms and independent commission to transform social care
Source: gov.uk (2025-01-03)

Immediate investment and reforms to improve adult social care, and Louise Casey appointed to head independent commission and build cross-party consensus.

- Government sets out immediate investment and reforms to improve adult social care and support the workforce
- Package of support will deliver the government’s Plan for Change by helping to keep older people out of hospital and living at home independently, for longer
- Thousands more disabled people to receive home adaptations as government improves technology and data sharing between NHS and social care
- Baroness Louise Casey to chair an independent commission into adult social care
Thousands more people with disabilities will be supported to remain in their homes thanks to immediate action government is taking to improve adult social care, support the care workforce and take pressure off the NHS, the government has announced today (3 January 2025).

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting will confirm an £86 million boost to the Disabled Facilities Grant for this financial year - on top of the £86 million announced for next financial year at the Budget, taking the annual total to £711 million - to allow 7,800 more disabled and elderly people to make vital improvements to their home, allowing them to live more independent lives and reducing hospitalisations.

Alongside the funding, the government’s immediate action to support adult social care also includes harnessing the power of care technology to transform care and support older people to live at home for longer, cutting red tape to ensure billions of joint NHS and social care funding is keeping people healthy and taking pressure off the NHS, as well as improved career pathways for care workers and new national standards to ensure providers and families use the best care technology.

Care workers will be better supported to take on further duties to deliver health interventions, such as blood pressure checks, meaning people can receive more routine checks and care at home without needing to travel to healthcare settings. The national career structure for care staff will also be expanded, ensuring there are opportunities for career progression and development pathways. Upskilling carers will not only help boost morale and the retention of care workers, but it will also lead to improved outcomes for patients.

The government will develop a shared digital platform to allow up-to-date medical information to be shared between the NHS and care staff, including when someone last took their medication, to ensure people receive the best possible care.

The changes announced today will support the adult social care sector to give people the best possible care in the most appropriate place. It will also deliver on the government’s Plan for Change (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/plan-for-change) by reducing the amount of time patients spend in hospital.

Alongside immediate steps to ease pressure on the sector and improve support for care workers, the government is also kickstarting work on the necessary long-term reform to overhaul social care and address the inherited challenges it faces. As set out in the manifesto, this deep reform will include the creation of a national care service underpinned by national standards, delivering consistency of care across the country. As a first step, the government will launch an independent commission into adult social care to be chaired by The Baroness Casey of Blackstock DBE CB, to inform the work needed to deliver this.

The commission, reporting to the Prime Minister, will work with people drawing on care and support, families, staff, politicians and the public, private and third sector to make clear recommendations for how to rebuild the adult social care system to meet the current and future needs of the population.

Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting, said:

In the first 6 months of this government, work has already begun on stabilising the care sector, investing in prevention, and in carers and care workers. The investment and reforms we’re announcing today will help to modernise social care, get it working more closely with the NHS, and help deliver our Plan for Change.

But our ageing society, with costs of care set to double in the next 20 years, demands longer-term action.

The independent commission will work to build a national consensus around a new national care service able to meet the needs of older and disabled people into the 21st century.

I have written to opposition parties to invite them to take part in the commission’s work, and asked Baroness Louise Casey to build a cross-party consensus, to ensure the national care service survives governments of different shades, just as our NHS has for the past 76 years.

We are appointing one of our country’s leading public service reformers, and Whitehall’s greatest do-er, to finally grasp the nettle on social care reform.

Split over 2 phases, the commission will set out a vision for adult social care, with recommended measures and a roadmap for delivery.

The first phase, reporting in 2026, will identify the critical issues facing adult social care and set out recommendations for effective reform and improvement in the medium term.

It will recommend tangible, pragmatic solutions that can be implemented in a phased way to lay the foundations for a national care service. The recommendations of this phase will be aligned with the government’s spending plans which will be set out at the Spending Review in the spring.

The second phase, reporting by 2028, will make longer-term recommendations for the transformation of adult social care. It will build on the commission’s first phase to look at the model of care needed to address our ageing population, how services should be organised to deliver this, and how to best create a fair and affordable adult social care system for all.

Opposition parties have been invited to take part in the commission, with the aim of building a cross-party and national consensus on the responsibilities the state and individuals have for social care, how to meet the rising demands caused by an ageing population, and how best to structure the national care service.

Baroness Louise Casey of Blackstock said:

Millions of older people, disabled people, their families and carers rely upon an effective adult social care system to live their lives to the full, with independence and dignity.

An independent commission is an opportunity to start a national conversation, find the solutions and build consensus on a long-term plan to fix the system. I am pleased the Prime Minister has asked me to lead this vital work.

Minister of State for Care, Stephen Kinnock, said:

Previous attempts to reform adult social care have failed due to a destructive combination of party political point-scoring and short-term thinking.

Baroness Casey’s commission will build cross-party consensus, and will lay the foundations for a national care service that’s rooted in fairness and equality. It will tackle both the immediate issues and the fundamental challenges that must be addressed if we are to get our adult social care system back on its feet and fit for the future.

The Casey Commission is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform adult social care, and to ensure that everyone is able to live with the dignity, independence and quality of life that they deserve.

This plan will help to reduce pressures on the NHS. The uplift in the Disabled Facilities Grant will help to ensure that disabled and elderly people live more independently at home for longer. By improving integrated care, we can keep people out of hospital when they do not need to be there and make sure that when they do need hospital care, they are discharged as soon as they are medically fit to leave, with support to recover.

Separately, the government will shortly publish a new policy framework for the Better Care Fund in 2025 to 2026. The framework has been developed collaboratively between the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHS England, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and local government and will support local systems to deliver integrated health and social care in a way that supports patients and delivers better outcomes.

The new framework will focus £9 billion of NHS and local government funding on meeting 2 health priorities - moving care from hospital to the community and from sickness to prevention. It will cut red tape for the NHS and local authorities, but will also hold local leaders accountable for improving care. They will be expected to make improvements on emergency admissions, delayed discharges and admissions to long-term residential care.

NHS Chief Executive, Amanda Pritchard, said:

A long-term solution for social care is absolutely critical as we build an NHS that is fit for the future through the 10 Year Health Plan, so we really welcome the additional investment to services as well as the independent commission into social care.

Social care has a huge impact on the NHS, with thousands of people in hospitals who are medically fit for discharge the current strain the sector is under has significant consequences for both NHS productivity and performance, so we hope this vital action plan and commitment to create a national care service will both help better support people and ease pressure on hospital wards.

The commission, which is expected to begin in April 2025, will form a key part of the government’s Plan for Change which will turn around health and care services, starting with cutting waiting lists and coupled with reform so they are fit for the future.

The immediate actions to support the social care sector set out today and the work of the commission also come alongside the government’s work to establish the first ever Fair Pay Agreement for care professionals, which we have already introduced legislation for.

Helen Walker, Chief Executive of Carers UK, said:

With 4.7 million unpaid carers in England who are the backbone of care within this country, we very much welcome this announcement. Adult social care is desperately in need of reform and a sustainable future. Families are under intense pressure and providing more care than ever before, many going without breaks, putting their own health at risk and having no choice but to give up work to care.

Good quality and affordable adult social care is critical to the lives of millions of unpaid carers and their families providing care, helping them to juggle work and care, return to work, and protect their health and wellbeing. We look forward to engaging with Baroness Casey and the independent commission to ensure carers’ voices are heard loud and clear and to set out the cross-government support that unpaid carers need.

Kathryn Smith, Chief Executive at the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), said:

With its aim of building cross-party consensus for a future national care service, the Casey Commission has the potential to end decades of gridlock and deliver a lasting settlement that will change the lives of people who draw on care and support for the better.

We look forward to contributing to the commission’s work, including sharing our ideas and good practice examples for improving access to care, adopting new care models and raising quality standards.

Harnessing and scaling innovation will be crucial to navigating the current challenges facing social care as well as future-proofing the system for the long term. This includes addressing the growing demand for social care and people’s evolving care needs, tackling longstanding workforce challenges, and finding a fair and sustainable way of financing social care.

Skills for Care CEO, Oonagh Smyth, said:

Skills for Care welcomes the appointment of Baroness Louise Casey to chair an independent commission to help us to build consensus on the huge potential for adult social care to support people in all our communities to live good lives.

We are pleased to see the commitment to both short-term support and long-term reform for adult social care because we need both, and we welcome the focus on the 1.59 million people working in social care. We look forward to sharing with the commission the recommendations in the workforce strategy (https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/Workforce-Strategy/Home.aspx) that we published last year with key partners from across our diverse sector and are implementing now to ensure that we have the workforce we need for the future.

Skills for Care has already led the work with DHSC on the care workforce pathway (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/care-workforce-pathway-for-adult-social-care), which will help to ensure that the care workforce is valued, developed and rewarded, and on the guiding principles for delegated healthcare activities. We look forward to working with government to implement these initiatives in full over future years.

Jackie O’Sullivan, Executive Director of Strategy and Influence at learning disability charity Mencap, said:

For too long, too many people with a learning disability haven’t received the social care they need to live healthy and happy lives. Today’s announcement marks the start of work towards wholesale social care reform and is a significant step in the right direction.

We welcome that the independent commission will look at social care solutions for working-aged disabled adults, as well as for older people. This will ensure that reforms take account their different needs.

For the 1.5 million people with a learning disability, it is not just a case of ensuring their medical needs are met. The system needs to have sufficient funding and support for staff to help them with every aspect of their life, from socialising and managing money to education and employment.

Past attempts at social care reform have ended up becoming political footballs, so this independent commission is a chance for all parties to work together to deliver the change needed for the millions who currently rely on social care, and all of us who might need it in the future.

Background information

Designed to bolster the adult social care over the next year, the government’s immediate work to support the social care sector plan will:

give disabled people more independence in their own homes through an immediate in-year uplift to the Disabled Facilities Grant of £86 million. This is on top of the £625 million paid to local authorities in May 2024. The government announced an £86 million additional investment in the Disabled Facilities Grant for the 2025 to 2026 financial year at the Budget (bringing total funding for 2025 to 2026 to £711 million also). This supports the wider announcement of up to £3.7 billion of additional funding for social care authorities in 2025 to 2026 announced at the provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

reform the Better Care Fund to ensure pooled NHS and local authority funding spent on social care contributes to wider efforts to reduce emergency admissions, delayed discharges and care home admissions

set new national standards and trusted guidance on the best technology in care, so that people receiving care, their families and care providers can confidently buy what works and get the safest, most effective tech into their homes or services. The standards will help care providers know which technologies are fit for purpose, secure and able to connect with wider NHS and social care systems in the future, in order to encourage investment. They will also help technology suppliers know where to invest to grow their businesses and continue to create innovative products that support people’s care. For example, sensor-based technologies can prevent and reduce the impact of falls, enabling people to live independently for longer and decreasing demand on the NHS and social care. These devices can raise alerts when someone is at risk of a fall and when a fall has taken place, reducing the length of time someone spends waiting to get the help they need. These are already being used by more than 1.7 million people to support their care; government will go further, by making it easier for families to identify and agree which technologies will work best for an elderly person. Through this approach, families and care providers can work more closely to integrate assisted technologies into care plans to help keep patients living at home independently rather than in hospital, which can be distressing and upsetting particularly for elderly and frail patients, while taking up valuable NHS time and resources

join up health and care services by:
- supporting care workers to take on further duties to deliver delegated healthcare activities, such as blood pressure checks and other healthcare interventions
- enabling health and care staff to access real-time social care, GP and hospital data including by joining up digital systems with a shared platform. By the end of the Parliament, we aim for all care providers to be fully digitised, and for staff to have access to essential medical information in a timely way
This will deliver significant benefits to:
- care users, who will not need to repeat information about their care needs multiple times
- care staff, who will not need to wait in a GP phone queue to find information about the people they care for
- the NHS, where information about someone’s recent care history can help a doctor to determine the best treatment
By linking up systems, NHS and care staff will have instant access to the latest information, speeding up and improving care both in hospital and at home.

The government’s immediate work to support the social care sector plan will also professionalise the workforce by expanding the national career structure - ensuring that there are recognised career progression and development pathways, learning and development, encouraging people to stay in the care workforce for longer. Alongside this, we will crack down on abuse of the social care visa and strengthen sanctions for those exploiting the care worker visa route and support workers who have been displaced as a result of action already taken against employers. We will not hesitate to go further to tackle abuse if necessary. The government is making available up to £3.7 billion of additional funding for social care authorities in 2025 to 2026, which includes an £880 million increase in the Social Care Grant. In total, the provisional Local Government Finance Settlement for 2025 to 2026 makes available £69 billion for local government, which is a 3.5% real terms increase in councils’ core spending power on 2024 to 2025.

The government is already taking action to tackle the challenges facing adult social care and taking the first steps towards building a national care service by introducing legislation that will establish the first ever Fair Pay Agreement for care professionals.

We are also increasing the Carer’s Allowance earnings limit by £45 per week - the largest increase to the earnings limit since the benefit’s introduction, which will ensure over 60,000 additional people can claim Carer’s Allowance by 2029 to 2030. We have also announced that Liz Sayce OBE will lead an independent review into Carer’s Allowance overpayments (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-review-of-carers-allowance-overpayments-terms-of-reference) to reduce the risk of them accruing in the future.

The Baroness Casey of Blackstock DBE CB: short biography

Baroness Casey was made head of the Rough Sleepers’ Unit in 1999, where she successfully led the strategy to reduce the numbers of people living on the streets by two-thirds. She went on to hold several leadership positions including the Director of the national Anti-Social Behaviour Unit, the Respect Task Force and the Troubled Families programme, as well as the UK’s first Victims’ Commissioner.

She left the Civil Service in 2017 to establish the Institute for Global Homelessness, with the aim of delivering an international solution to homelessness across the world. In 2020, Baroness Casey returned to public service to support the Government’s COVID-19 rough sleeping response and developed the ‘Everyone In’ strategy.

Baroness Casey has led a series of high-profile reviews including the review into culture and standards in the Metropolitan Police and the Rotherham investigation.

Baroness Casey today will be appointed as a government lead non-executive director (NED), playing a key role in co-ordinating non-executive directors, setting cross-cutting NED priorities, and supporting the Cabinet Office and other departments to deliver the Plan for Change. She will undertake this position alongside her role as Chair of the adult social care commission.