At the LGA's annual conference this week, Baroness Casey announced a national public "Big Conversation" on adult social care. Responding for councils, Cllr Dr Wendy Taylor MBE, chair of the LGA's Health and Wellbeing Committee, said local government is "essential to making adult social care reform work and stick" and called for "a new partnership between national government, local government and citizens." The financial risk of growing old and needing care is a national risk, and it should be managed nationally … through a national funding settlement that gives individuals certainty, providers stability, and local authorities the resources to do the job they are asked to do.Melanie Weatherley MBE, Co-Chair, Care Association Alliance Today we add to that conversation. The Care Association Alliance has published Adult Social Care Funding Reform — the first paper in our programme Building a National Care Service: A Programme for Reform. It sets out a detailed, costed proposal for a national funding settlement for adult social care in England.  Please read it, share it with your members, and use it. Here is what it says.

Responding to the resignation of Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister and the prospect of Andy Burnham succeeding him as Labour leader, the Care Association Alliance (CAA), the national voice of local care provision in England, has called on whoever forms the next government to make the reform of adult social care funding an immediate priority. It has also called on Andy Burnham to honour the commitments he has made to the sector. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, and again in recent weeks, Burnham has said he would overhaul England's failing adult social care system within his first year in office. The CAA today urges him to stand by those words: to bring forward the timetable of the Independent Commission on Adult Social Care, chaired by Baroness Casey, and to commit to a fundamental overhaul of how care is funded, starting with the introduction of a national funding settlement. That settlement is set out in the CAA's forthcoming policy paper, Adult Social Care Funding Reform: The Case for a National Funding Settlement, which will be published shortly. 2028 is too late The Casey Commission's first phase is due to report this year, but its final recommendations are not expected until 2028. That timetable makes meaningful legislative reform unlikely before the next general election. The sector, the people who draw on care, and the families who support them cannot wait that long. A change of leadership is the moment to match the scale of the crisis with the pace of the response. National Funding Settlement The CAA's forthcoming paper sets out why the current model is neither fair nor sustainable. The financial burden of a national demographic challenge falls on local authority budgets that vary enormously across the country. The result is a postcode lottery in which access to care is shaped by geography as much as by need. Providers are commissioned at rates that do not cover their costs. The average domiciliary care fee of £24.10 an hour falls nearly £8 below the recognised minimum sustainable rate. Families face costs that are unpredictable and bear little relationship to what others pay elsewhere, and the means-test capital threshold has been frozen at £23,250 since 2010. In place of this, the CAA proposes a national funding settlement built on three principles: national pooling of financial risk, a statutory entitlement triggered by assessed need, and local delivery within a national framework. Its recommendations include a ring-fenced, needs-adjusted national care grant; a national eligibility threshold set in statute; a national tariff for publicly commissioned care; a lifetime cap on individual contributions alongside a substantially raised capital threshold; and an independent National Care Assessment Body to oversee eligibility, pricing and long-term demand. Commenting, Melanie Weatherley MBE, Co-Chair of the Care Association Alliance, said: "Social care has been left on the 'too difficult' pile by successive governments for far too long. A change of leadership cannot become another excuse for delay. It must be the moment the country finally grips this. "Andy Burnham has said he would overhaul adult social care within his first year in office. We welcome that ambition, and today we ask him to stand by it. That means refusing to let the people who need care wait until 2028 for answers, bringing forward the work of the Casey Commission, and committing now to the reform that everything else depends on: a sustainable, national settlement for how care is funded. "We will set out in a forthcoming series of papers what a genuine National Care Service should look like in practice. The case for a national funding settlement is the foundation. Whoever leads the next government, the frontline providers we represent stand ready to help build it. But the time for reviews and timetables stretching into the next decade is over. The time to act is now."