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Andy Burnham knows that ‘fixing’ social care will drain political capital away from him faster than a teenager emptying their parents’ bank account. At the moment, he is clearly more focused on funding mechanisms to put the sector on a sustainable footing and the way in which it will or won’t be enmeshed with the NHS. But there’s another longer-term drain on his – or any future prime minister’s – capital too, which is the quality of care that’s available.
The debate has understandably been focused on the financial aspect, but, for a long time, we have not had an open discussion of what adult social care should actually be like for the people in the system. Burnham has, like many people, had to find care for his own father, who has Alzheimer’s, so he will be acutely aware that the quality of care homes varies dramatically. Councils have a statutory obligation to find and fund care for adults in need of it, but they do not act as a quality control on those homes, and indeed the supply of places is sufficiently tight that neither local authorities nor relatives have much choice over the kind of home they can afford.
We have a basic expectation of a standard care in the NHS that we simply don’t for care homes
