Last year it became OK to admit that social care was in cataclysmic crisis. Yet so far there is little sign that 2017 will see any high level recognition of the scale of change needed to bring about any kind of long-term solution to this key social policy. The prime minister has been reluctant to say more than that her government “is starting internally to look” at the issue. Hardly reassuring when even the Care Quality Commission has talked of social care reaching a “tipping point”.
Poor public understanding of social care and its low political priority, coupled with issues of chronic underfunding and massive demographic change, continue to be a recipe for policy inaction. New Labour ducked the one real chance for change it had in 1999 when the Sutherland Commission offered its progressive recommendations.
