In this guest blog, Stephen Burke, CEO of the Hallmark Foundation, argues that instead of levelling down social care we need to be raising our ambitions to get care fixed now and in the future – for all our sakes. 

When the ILC-UK reviewed the last twenty five years of progress on the ageing agenda at its recent annual Future of Ageing conference, there was a short session on social care.

Care appears to be levelling down rapidly. There was unanimous agreement at the ILC conference therefore that we have to do better, a lot better, over the next twenty five years.

As someone whose approach to life is glass half full, I think there are many reasons why positive change will happen: from our ageing population who have higher expectations and are more likely to vote to their families who are finding it harder to balance work and caring responsibilities, to the moral imperative for looking after each other, as reflected in January’s Archbishops’ Reimagining Care Commission report.

Better care really is everybody’s business. All of us need to get care fixed, now and in the future, because it affects us all. There are only four kinds of people in the world: those who have been caregivers; those who are currently caregivers; those who will be caregivers; and those who will need a caregiver.

Part of the problem is that the way care is funded, commissioned, delivered and provided is fragmented, with multiple different interests. We need to unite because care is everybody’s business, not particular vested interests.

In doing so, we must start and finish with people’s experiences, lives and well-being in shaping overarching principles. We all have more than one perspective and should use the different hats we all wear as relatives, friends, carers, providers, investors and people drawing on care to co-produce better care.

From my perspective, a new care system must be based on five principles: it must be fair, simple, sustainable, personal and universal. Currently it is none of those.

Some people have suggested that care needs a 1948 moment. For the NHS, everyone knows that the fundamental principle is that access to healthcare is free at the point of need and use. We require a similar form of words for care and support – there when and where we need it so everyone can live life to the full.

Social Care Future and others have articulated this in a way that we can all get behind. We must think big, be ambitious and build on the best of what’s currently happening here and abroad.

Making this happen will require some key steps forward:

• national leadership – providing bold, strategic direction, coordination and resources
• a cost benefit analysis of universal care – measuring the social and economic benefits of investing in vital infrastructure
• promoting prevention/early intervention – moving beyond crisis services eg reimagining care homes as community hubs, supporting the wider community
• joining up care, health, housing, but also transport and community networks
• making better use of resources – offering universal advice, moving from gatekeeping to helping earlier, using people’s and communities’ strengths and assets, supporting family carers, harnessing technology
• promoting care positively – as a career, reaching young people early with schools
• starting and ending with wellbeing, with better care being key to living the life we all want.

The next three years are critical. Reforming care must be high up on the agenda in the lead up to the next election, in all parties’ manifestos, and then central to the first year of the next government.

Stephen Burke is CEO of the Hallmark Foundation which focuses on ageing well and improving care and is currently funding the ILC-UK’s Healthy Ageing and Prevention Index programme.