News
The King’s Fund – Stories from social care leadership: Progress amid pestilence and penury
They say:
- Adult social care is the often forgotten and invisible part of the welfare state. For the past decade the sector has been under acute financial pressure.
- Funding is both public and private, and there is a bewildering array of providers, commissioners, representative bodies and voices involved.
- The King’s Fund conducted unattributable interviews with people from a range of organisations, from a small number of more national voices to directors of adult social services and service users. We asked where they believe that the leadership in social care lies. How effective is it? What could be done to improve it?
- We heard that there is huge variation in the quality of both services and leadership, with some of the best leadership being very local indeed. There was a widespread complaint about a lack of leadership from the Department of Health and Social Care, on top of the longstanding failure to ‘fix’ social care.
- We heard that key issues included a lack of data, of infrastructure and research, and of training and development.
- A more unified voice might well benefit the sector, while the changes to national leadership that the Department of Health and Social Care has under way need to be seen through and made permanent.
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/social-care-leadership