Changing perceptions of care is a hot topic right now, with the sector keen to hold on to the political momentum created when the government came into power promising a National Care Service. Understandably, there’s a jittery sense that a once-in-a-generation opportunity to secure proper, sustainable change could slip away as we wait for the Casey report on how reforms can be achieved, due in 2027. Next year feels a long way off in a domestic political environment dominated by international events with a seismic impact on our economic outlook, yet seemingly beyond our control.
So how do we get voters without skin in the game to care about people who live in care homes at anything like the same level as rising food prices or immigration policy - so it registers on the doorstep and translates into political pressure?
So to Care England’s splashy parliamentary report launch today, hosted by the cross-bench peer and deputy speaker of the House of Lords, Baroness Finlay. In The Power of Care: the system behind our society, The providers' leader sets out how adult social care is not a service for “other people”, or a support system reserved for moments of crisis, but essential national infrastructure enabling people to live independently, supporting families to stay in work, sustaining local communities, easing pressure on the NHS and contributing significantly to the national economy.
And yes, launching that message in the Lords, with senior policy influencers in attendance (yours truly notwithstanding), is a good way to make noise in Westminster and keep the drumbeat going about care’s wider community and economic impact. As Nathan Hollow, a director at PLMR who co-authored the report, put it, the launch comes at “a critical moment for the future of adult social care” and is an attempt to shift a “national conversation too often focused on pressure, crisis and cost”. Social care, he argues, “has a powerful story to tell about its value to society, its economic contribution, and the opportunity it presents to transform the nation.
The question is what happens next. How do we ensure that story lands outside political circles?
The overriding answer is for the sector to take ownership of its own image, according to prominent provider leaders on a Care Show London panel last week on how to change perceptions of the sector – or as Care England chair and Majesticare CEO Angela Boxall, who chaired the session, put it: “Why is our image so bloody awful compared to the NHS?”
The panel - Hallmark CEO Aneurin Brown, Signature Homes CEO Rob Martin, Elizabeth Finn Homes CEO Olivia Curno and StellaCare NW MD Stella Shaw - agreed with Hollow that the sector needs to change the story it tells about itself, emphasising a need to move away from it being viewed through a narrow, traditional lens of “kindness” and basic support.
They argued the public needs to see the vital professional, skilled, and preventative work that goes on in homes every day. The risk assessment, clinical care, digital enablement, and the day-to-day judgement that keeps people out of hospital and living independently for longer.
They argued that the sector needs to banish its image of care work as a kind of act of charity that sits somewhere off to the side if it wants care to be taken seriously as part of national infrastructure.
This requires collaboration between providers to present a unified voice, taking up space in traditional and social media, and taking ownership when things go wrong as well as promoting success, they argued.
I’m looking forward to continuing this conversation at the event today and beyond, doing all I can to support that collaboration. Because until care is visible, understood and valued by people who don’t use it (yet), the promise of reform will always be vulnerable to the next news cycle.
