Care Association Alliance sets out a national funding model for adult social care, designed to give families certainty, providers stability, and councils the resources to do their job (Read the full report here ) A new CAA report proposes pooling the financial risk of an ageing population nationally, rather than leaving it with 153 individual councils. The core of the model: ring-fenced national funding shared on a needs-based formula, a national tariff for care, and an independent body to keep it honest. Individuals keep a means-tested contribution, but with a lifetime cap and a raised capital threshold, so no one faces unlimited costs or has to sell their home. Councils keep assessment, planning, safeguarding and oversight, but are relieved of carrying a national demographic risk on a local budget. Backed by the Rt Hon Damian Green, Chair of the Social Care Foundation and former Deputy Prime Minister responsible for social care policy. The Care Association Alliance (CAA) has published a proposal for how England should fund adult social care for older people. Its report, Adult Social Care Funding Reform, describes a national funding settlement built on a straightforward idea: the cost of growing old and needing care is a national risk, and it should be met nationally, while care itself continues to be arranged and delivered locally. A national risk carried on local budgets At present, primary responsibility for adult social care sits with 153 local authorities under the Care Act 2014. They assess need, commission services and manage local provider markets. They also carry the full financial weight of demographic change, a pressure that is national in scale and rising quickly. The number of people aged 85 and over is projected to double within twenty years, and the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that simply maintaining today's system will require public spending on social care to grow by 3.1 per cent a year over the next decade, compared with the 0.7 per cent average delivered between 2009/10 and 2022/23. That pressure shows up directly in the price of care. On average, councils pay £24.10 an hour for home care, while the Homecare Association puts the minimum sustainable rate at £32.14. The National Audit Office found in 2021 that authorities were commissioning care at below the sustainable cost of care, and the King's Fund reports that in 2025/26, council fee increases of around 5 per cent were outpaced by provider cost increases of 8 to 10 per cent. This is not a matter of councils choosing to underpay. It is what happens when local budgets are asked to absorb a national cost. Providers take the strain through thinner margins and deferred investment, and families often meet it through the higher fees paid by those who fund their own care, on average 41 per cent more than the council-funded rate. One settlement, built as a system The CAA argues that these are symptoms of a single structural mismatch, and that they need to be fixed together. Its proposed national funding settlement rests on three principles: pooling the financial risk of demographic change nationally, a statutory entitlement to support triggered by assessed need, and continued local delivery within a national framework. In practice, the settlement has five main components: A ring-fenced national care grant , distributed to councils on a needs-adjusted formula, so that funding follows need rather than local fiscal capacity. A reformed means test , with a raised capital threshold, frozen at £23,250 since 2010/11, and a lifetime cap on what any individual can be asked to pay. A national tariff for residential and home care , set at the independently assessed cost of sustainable provision, which councils commission at or above. A bundled funding model for residential care , with assessed packages that are portable when people move. A reformed Deferred Payment Agreement scheme , so that no one is required to sell their home to pay for residential care. Underpinning the settlement is an independent National Care Assessment Body, sitting outside both the NHS and local government, which would verify the cost evidence, review the tariff and report where provision falls short. Local authorities retain their role as commissioners and delivery leaders, close to their communities and provider markets, but are relieved of being the sole bearer of national financial risk. The report is explicit about what it does not propose. This is not a free care service on the model of the NHS, and it does not absorb social care into the health service. Individuals who can contribute to the cost of their care will continue to do so, within a reformed means test and a lifetime cap. The word national describes the funding architecture, not the way care is provided. The proposal is offered as a contribution to the Casey Commission, which is beginning to test public views on who should receive care, what the state should guarantee and what individuals should contribute. The CAA says funding reform is the necessary first step, and Adult Social Care Funding Reform is the first in a programme of papers it will publish over the coming months. Melanie Weatherley MBE, Co-Chair of the Care Association Alliance, said: “No family should receive worse care because of where they happen to live, and no provider should have to choose between keeping a contract and delivering care safely. These are not failings of the people running the system. They are what happens when a national risk is carried on local budgets. If we fund care nationally, price it honestly through a national tariff, and ask an independent body to keep it that way, we can give families certainty, providers stability, and councils the resources to do the job they are asked to do. “This paper is not a criticism of local authorities, who are doing a demanding job under real pressure. It is a practical plan to put the whole system on a sustainable footing, and we hope it is useful to Baroness Casey's commission as it begins its work.” The Rt Hon Damian Green, Chair of the Social Care Foundation and former Deputy Prime Minister responsible for social care, said: “The case for reform is widely accepted. What has been missing is a workable, affordable plan that a government of any colour could adopt. This paper offers exactly that, and a cross-party route to deliver it.” ENDS (Read the full report here ) Notes to editors The Care Association Alliance is the national umbrella body for local care associations in England, a member-led organisation with more than 50 local care associations, collectively representing over 10,000 independent care providers across every English region. It is a founding participant in the Care Provider Alliance. The £24.10 per hour figure is a national average local authority domiciliary care fee, not a per-council figure. It is cited alongside the Homecare Association's minimum sustainable rate (£32.14), the National Audit Office's 2021 finding on below-sustainable-rate commissioning, and the King's Fund's 2025/26 fee-versus-cost analysis, all set out in full in Adult Social Care Funding Reform (Paper One), published [DATE] 2026. Additional figures are drawn from the Health Foundation REAL Centre, the OBR, the King's Fund, the IFS and Social Care 360. The funding-gap projection runs to 2032/33. Baroness Casey's remarks were made on 7 July 2026, in a BBC Radio 4 Today interview and a speech to the Local Government Association's annual conference, in which she confirmed the Casey Commission will begin testing the views of the public this month ahead of its first report, due this year. Spokespeople are available for interview. Media enquiries: Melanie Weatherley MBE, Co-Chair of the Care Association Alliance.

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."