July’s White Paper sets out a vision for social care moving away from being a crisis-only service, towards forming a preventative system which helps people to maintain well-being through supporting more inclusive and effective communities, with less reliance on service-solutions. The draft Care and Support Bill published alongside the White Paper does a lot to tidy up an area of law which had become tangled and confusing over the decades and it also looks like it would sort out some issues like Ordinary Residence rules, which stop people who use support from moving to another council area. But the Bill does not entirely reflect the more radical aspects of the White Paper vision, setting out instead a framework for care and crisis management which we believe will replicate the current system’s tendency to shift resources away from prevention and into increasingly rationed and stigmatising crisis responses.
Together, a number of partners have produced a pre-legislative scrutiny briefing on the Care & Support Bill for colleagues in the Adult Social Care sector. As well as Shared Lives Plus, the partners are Community Catalysts, In Control, Inclusion North, Inclusive Neighbourhoods, Partners in Policymaking, Shared Lives Plus, Martin Farran (Director Adult Services for Barnsley and Chair of the Yorkshire/ Humberside Personalisation Network for the Association of Directors of Adult Services).
You can read the paper here. I’m giving evidence to the Joint Committee scrutinising the draft Bill on the 17th January. Always happy to hear people’s thoughts on what we’re suggesting of course.
Escaping the invisible asylum 