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CARE HOME


ENVIRONMENT Editor


Matt Seex mattseex@stepcomms.com


Business Manager Mike Gammon


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Geoff King geoffking@stepcomms.com Publishing Director


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THE CARE HOME ENVIRONMENT is published monthly by Step Communications Ltd, Step House, North Farm Road, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN2 3DR, UK.


Tel: +44 (0)1892 779999 Email: info@thecarehomeenvironment.com Web: www.thecarehomeenvironment.com


Matt Seex Editor mattseex@stepcomms.com


Social care: the invisible sector?


Welcome to the June issue of The Care Home Environment. Recently, the House of Lords Adult Social Care Committee held a number of evidence sessions to explore the assumptions and preconceptions about those who rely on care, and different methods of raising the profile of adult social care.


Since I began my tenure as Editor of The Care Home Environment three months ago, one of the most commonly repeated complaints I’ve heard from those who work in social care has been the relative invisibility of the sector compared to, for example, the NHS. It was a key theme both of Care England’s Facing the future conference in March and The King’s Fund’s Future of care event that same month.


Sooner or later most of us will have no choice but to engage with social care


ISSN NO. 2398-3280


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As the chair of the Adult Social Care Committee, Baroness Andrews, put it back in April: “While people understand by experience what the health service does, very few people understand what adult social care is, how it works and why it matters, until they themselves or their friends and families are directly affected.” Government promises to reform social care, and to raise ring-fenced funds via its new Health and Social Care Levy, do not seem to have provided much, if any, reassurance that things are looking good for the future of social care. The lack of public awareness - and indeed outcry - when it comes to the pressures on the


sector was returned to by a number of speakers at this year’s Residential & Home Care Show, which I attended on 18 May and which you can read about on page 14. During one of the panel discussions


at the show, Dr Jane Townson, CEO of the Homecare Association, said that those in social care had “a duty and responsibility to make the public understand” the crisis facing it. Yet suggestions on how to go about this were notably thin on the ground. The fact is that we don’t like to think about getting old and frail, and we don’t like to think about putting our parents in a care home. As a society, we would rather stick our head in the sand when it comes to social care, and to be fair there are arguably more pressing concerns for people to worry about as the cost of living crisis begins to bite, but sooner or later most of us will have no choice but to engage with social care, by which time the opportunity to build a system fit for the future may have already passed us by. As Nadra Ahmed OBE, chairman of the National Care Association, asked at the Residential & Home Care Show: “Why isn’t there an outcry?” Why indeed? I hope you enjoy the issue.


Follow us on twitter @tchemagazine June 2022 www.thecarehomeenvironment.com Follow our page on Linkedin 5


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