I have three wishes for social care in 2015.
My first is that we move from talk to action. The Care Act is a pretty remarkable piece of legislation; it is the right act. But words on a page and even new duties do not guarantee the changes they describe. Care and support will not be a radically different place all of a sudden on 1 April 2015. It will not just happen. Implementation will take a huge amount of vision and ambition matched by hard graft from everyone involved.
My wish is that as we gear up for 2015, there will be as much emphasis on the promotion of individual wellbeing, on building strong and inclusive communities and on the importance of co-production with people and families in implementing the reforms, as on the many other changes being introduced. I am director of Think Local Act Personal, and on our part we will be shifting the focus of our activity in 2015 towards supporting people to engage with our resources.
My second is for joined-up, coordinated, personalised care and support through the Integrated Personal Commissioning (IPC) programme. It was in July when NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens used his first major announcement to declare an ambitious extension of person-centred care, including personal budgets for many more people with health and care needs. Demonstrator sites will soon be announced and a transformational programme of activity will commence. This is immensely exciting, and our involvement as the NHS sets out on this new journey provides the platform to build on a wealth of the learning from social care.
My wish for IPC is that by this time next year our health and care system will be working a whole lot better for those with the most complex needs – for whom it doesn’t work well at the moment – and that the learning from this is emerging for others to follow.
My final wish for 2015 is that the year provides the opportunity to build on new relationships and partnerships between health, care, housing and beyond to make the best of scarce resources and bring about positive change. TLAP was delighted to welcome Public Health England, NHS England, the Office for Disability Issues, the Housing and Support Alliance and many others to our partnership in 2014. Plans are in place for important work that we will be doing together in 2015. These range from working with Health and Wellbeing Boards to help local areas build community capacity, to forging a new partnership with the Coalition for Collaborative Care who mirror our ambition for personalisation for the many millions of people with long-term health conditions.
I am acutely aware that I am making these wishes against a backdrop of unprecedented challenges, increasingly tough decisions and anxieties about what the future will hold. So my wishes come with a large caveat – that a new funding settlement to match the ambitions of everyone in the sector to do better for the people we serve is needed above all else. While increased funding for the NHS is, of course, welcome, this needs to be matched in-kind for social care. Politicians must recognise that you can’t invest in one system without the other. We must pull together to share this message so we can work to change people’s experiences for the better. Otherwise, we may find that our wishes remain just that: wishes.
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