For decades, adult social care has been the issue that successive Prime Ministers have known they need to tackle — and then found a reason not to.
There have been reviews, commissions, consultations and promises. There have been attempts at reform, only for political will to fade when the difficult choices arrived.
Fifteen years on from the ambitions set out in the 2010 Building the National Care Service white paper, we are still having the same arguments, before too often filing them away in the “too difficult” drawer.
But this time feels different.
Andy Burnham’s passion and commitment to reform social care is undeniable, fuelled in part by his own experience and frustrations with the care of his father, who has Alzheimer’s.
One of his first actions as Prime Minister was to grasp this nettle with real conviction — determined to stop passing this problem on to future generations and finally reform a system that has caused so much pain, uncertainty and financial hardship for millions of families.
That starts with three important steps.
First, he has brought forward Baroness Louise Casey’s review into creating a National Care Service, reporting next year, with a commitment to build a care system that is integrated with the NHS, centred around people and shaped through a genuine national conversation.
Second, he has started the work of transforming the care workforce — improving pay, training, career progression and professional recognition.
Because we cannot improve the quality of care without properly valuing the people who deliver it.
And third, he has committed to ending political point-scoring by beginning cross-party talks, recognising that lasting reform will only succeed if it is built on consensus rather than party politics.
Right now, the system is too complicated, uncertain and frightening for too many families.
People can spend years paying into it, only to face confusing rules and potentially devastating costs when they need care. Councils are left making impossible choices, while care workers remain too often undervalued.
I have seen this first hand as an officer of the Adult Social Care All-Party Parliamentary Group, and before becoming an MP I held the adult services portfolio as a councillor.
We cannot keep passing this problem from one government to the next.
Join the Big Conversation on Care
Any lasting settlement will need to survive changes of government and be based on a broad consensus about what we, as a country, believe people should be able to expect when they need care.
I know that personally. I share care for my mum, who has dementia, at home.
That is why it is so important that the public will be genuinely involved in shaping the answer.
The Big Conversation on Care gives us the chance to shape the system we want — what it should provide, how it should be funded, and how we support families and carers.
After years of delay, we finally have an opportunity to do things differently.
So please, join the Big Conversation here.
Let us help build a social care system that is compassionate, affordable, sustainable and fit for all of us.
This is a monthly guest column provided by
Mohammad Yasin, Labour MP for Bedford & Kempston.
It is published unedited and does not
reflect the views of the Bedford Independent.
