Alison McGovern has been appointed Minister of State for Social Care, taking responsibility for adult social care at the Department of Health and Social Care following the formation of Prime Minister Andy Burnham's new government last month.
McGovern was appointed as a minister of state in the Department last month, but her brief to take on social care has only just been revealed. She succeeds Stephen Kinnock, who was appointed as Secretary of State for Wales by Mr Burnham, and her remit includes adult social care, hospital discharge, frailty and dementia, end of life care, disabilities, mental health, and the government's work and health agenda.
Ms McGovern was previously Local Government and Homelessness minister and has also formerly held the employment brief in the Department for Work and Pensions. She has been an MP since 2010 and currently represents Birkenhead.
Reform programme
The appointment comes after Mr Burnham recently signalled an accelerated approach to social care reform.
The prime minister used his first major speech on social care to pledge faster progress, describing the failure to reform the sector over recent decades as "a major dereliction of public duty". He announced plans to bring forward the timetable for recommendations from the Independent Commission on Adult Social Care, chaired by Baroness Louise Casey, by a year, and said the DHSC ministerial team would take "an immediate focus" on broader workforce reform alongside implementation of the Fair Pay Agreement, arguing that the sector's frontline workforce must be strengthened if wider system reforms are to succeed.
