Andrea Sutcliffe, the new chief inspector of social care, will be "the nation's whistleblower in chief" on poor standards in the sector, according to Jeremy Hunt.
The health secretary told sector leaders that Sutcliffe, who took up her post with the Care Quality Commission this month, will act as a champion of service users and will run a new Ofsted-style inspection regime aimed at rooting out abuse and poor quality care.
Hunt told delegates at the National Children and Adult Services conference that 112,000 cases of alleged abuse were referred by English councils in 2012-13, the majority involving over-65s.
"Something is badly wrong in a society where potentially 1,000 such instances are happening every single week," he said.
The CQC will inspect 25,000 care homes and will publish ratings, grading services as either outstanding, good, requiring improvement or inadequate.
"I want us all to know how good our local care is," he said.
He added that there would be a renewed focus on driving up levels of training and development among the 1.6 million people employed in the sector.
Hunt also said action was needed to tackle the problem of isolation among older people; some 800,000 people in England are "chronically lonely", he said.
He told delegates that families in the UK should learn from the "reverence and respect" shown to older people in Asian countries.
He said: "If we are to tackle the challenge of an ageing society, we must learn from this – and restore and reinvigorate the social contract between generations.
"This is not just a government or even a local government solution, there has to be a social solution."
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