Should social care ministers have a background in the sector?
- Yes, otherwise they wouldn't understand the role. (91%, 1,253 Votes)
- No, background isn't important so long as they have reasonable expertise. (9%, 121 Votes)
Total Voters: 1,374
Loading ...Wes Streeting and Bridget Phillipson have been handed responsibility for social care in the Labour government, after it took power in the general election.
Prime minister Keir Starmer has appointed both to the cabinet roles mirroring the briefs they held in opposition.
Streeting has become health and social care secretary, giving him responsibility for the NHS and adult social care.
Phillipson, meanwhile, has been appointed education secretary, a role that has oversight for children’s social care, as well as early years, schools, further and higher education and apprenticeships.
As for their Conservative predecessors, a key question facing both Streeting and Phillipson is the degree of attention they will confer on social care compared with the more politically salient elements of their briefs: the NHS in Streeting’s case and schools and childcare in Phillipson’s.
Social care not among Labour ‘missions’
Unlike social care – for adults or children – these policy areas feature in the five “missions” that Labour has set as its key priorities as well as the six “first steps” the party has laid out as its initial actions for government.
And Streeting made no reference to social care in his opening statement as health and social care secretary, which was entirely focused on the NHS.
Streeting and Phillipson’s priorities
- NHS mission: Build an NHS fit for the future that is there when people need it; with fewer lives lost to the biggest killers; in a fairer Britain, where everyone lives well for longer.
- NHS first step: Cut NHS waiting times with 40,000 more appointments each week, during evenings and weekends, paid for by cracking down on tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes.
- Education and childcare mission: Break down barriers to opportunity by reforming our childcare and education systems, to make sure there is no class ceiling on the ambitions of young people in Britain.
- Education first step: Recruit 6,500 new teachers in key subjects to set children up for life, work and the future, paid for by ending tax breaks for private schools.
Labour’s election manifesto did include a number of policies on adult social care – notably establishing a fair pay agreement for care workers, in order to improve their terms and conditions – however, it allocated no funding to any of them.
Though not included in the manifesto, Streeting also confirmed in interviews that the party was committed to introducing the previous government’s planned adult social care charging reforms – including a cap on care costs – by the planned implementation date of October 2025.
However, according to think-tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Conservative government allocated no funding to this, so Labour would have to find the money for this. This is difficult given the new government’s commitments not to raise the main rates of income tax, VAT and national insurance and also be on course to cut public debt, as a proportion of GDP, over the medium-term.
Limited children’s social care offer
On children’s social care, the party’s manifesto offer was much more limited than it was for adults’ services.
The only substantive commitments were to strengthen regulation of the sector and to improve inter-agency information sharing by creating unique identifiers for children and families, but Labour provided very little detail on either.
Phillipson did reference the “need to bring reform to children’s social care children’s social care and to build opportunities for our most vulnerable children” in a speech to Department for Education staff on taking up her role (credit: Schools Week).
This suggests that the party may continue with the previous government’s reforms to the sector, set out in its Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy.
However, its manifesto made no mention of the reforms, so it remains to be seen whether the new government will take forward their implementation and allocate the required resource.
Phillipson’s letter to staff
She subsequently published a letter to staff working in children’s services, education and early years. Referencing the mission she is responsible for, the letter was framed around the government’s ambition to “[break] down barriers to opportunity and improving life chances for every child”.
The one specific pledge she made in relation to social care was that the government would “work with local government to provide loving, secure homes for children in care”.
More broadly, she said the jobs of practitioners across all services had been made more difficult by “severe financial pressures squeezing all your budgets, high workload, climbing vacancy rates, strain on care, mental health and SEND services, among many other issues”.
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Sadly, there does not seem to be much more hope for Local Authority Children’s Services and Social Work under Labour. I was exploring returning to working as a children’s Social Worker after 30+ years experience, but perhaps not after all, eh?
The new Labour Health Secretary has declared that “the NHS is broken” and this was now the Dept of Health’s official policy. Will he acknowledge that Adult and Children’s Social Care are equally broken as a result of years of austerity and this also needs to be addressed and fixed?
What thinking has the labour party on care for the elderly, in particular the ever increasing number of those with Alzheimer’s disease? Will they insist on better pay for everyone involved in this difficult work, an improvement in care home standards for our elderly and a fairer way for people to pay towards their care? Please look at all of this with some urgency; we are all growing old and we are not all rich enough to make choices. Most of us have to accept what is given and it is not a good way to spend your last years. Spend some time in a care home to see what I mean. PLEASE.
It is quite sad that social care and social work hardly get any mention but the sectors and people we support do (which is positive in that we want to improve lives and so do nurses and teachers). There is so much work to do – a huge deficit, society and young people’s lives and outlooks are SO different since lockdowns and social media infiltrated every aspect of our mental well-being. The difficulty is that life in the working and benefits world is tough. If food banks are the indicator then there is a lot to do as they are growing and growing. Come on labour – make changes asap
There is no money so things are not going to improve for anyone by the looks of it. More of the same, Toryism under a Labour government that campaigned on change?
And Labour explain this in the same Tory terms. Things cannot change overnight or at a switch.
“Rachel Reeves [new Labour Chancellor] warns public finances in worst state since second world war.” Were not the Tories saying exactly the same in 2010 after years of Labour governments?
NHS must end “begging culture and drive growth says Wes Streeting…The NHS must stop asking for money and start driving for growth by getting people back to work”. Sounds like Toryism to me. What hope with a change of government and so early days?