Social care provision and funding has been the subject of numerous reports, commissions and Government papers over many years. Despite agreement on the urgent need for reform, this has not translated into action or consensus on how it should be achieved.
Ahead of the Government's Green Paper, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee and the Health and Social Care Committee held a short inquiry to identify funding reforms which would command broad consensus, and which would enable the Government to make swift and tangible progress in this area. Bearing this in mind, submissions were invited from organisations and individuals on the following terms:
- How to fund social care sustainably for the long term (beyond 2020), bearing in mind in particular the interdependence of the health and social care systems; and
- The mechanism for reaching political and public consensus on a solution.
As part of the joint inquiry, the two Committees commissioned a Citizens’ Assembly. The Citizens’ Assembly considered the question of how adult social care in England for both older and working age adults should be funded long term. The Assembly’s recommendations fed into the joint inquiry and were considered by the Committees alongside the other evidence submitted to the inquiry. The Assembly’s findings have been published separately: