This week the London Care Show 2011 took place at Olympia and Lorna Tyrtania, Senior Product Manager at MindLeaders ThirdForce, was the first guest through the door – that’s how keen she is to hear about important updates from the care sector!  She reports here on two key sessions.

Funding the future of social care

The first session was a panel debate chaired by Martin Green, Chief Executive of ECCA (English Community Care Association). The panel comprised of James Lloyd, Director of the Strategic Society Centre, Elizabeth Feltoe, Policy Advisor to Age UK, Dame Jo Williams of CQC (Care Quality Commission) and Peter Day, President of ADASS (Association of Directors of Adult Social Services).

As one of the commissioners, Dame Jo kicked off the session by giving us an insight into the work of the Dilnot Commission, encouraging us to keep thinking positively about the future with an ageing population and not to see it as a burden. For those of you who haven’t read the Dilnot report, its main proposals were the following:

■Individuals’ lifetime contributions towards their social care costs – which are currently potentially unlimited – should be capped. After the cap is reached, individuals would be eligible for full state support. This cap should be between £25,000 and £50,000. £35,000 was considered the most appropriate and fair figure

■The means-tested threshold, above which people are liable for their full care costs, should be increased from £23,250 to £100,000

■National eligibility criteria and portable assessments should be introduced to ensure greater consistency

■All those who enter adulthood with a care and support need should be eligible for free state support immediately rather than being subjected to a means test.

This led to plenty of discussion around how the state could afford to support such radical plans and whether the financial sector would be able to devise products to help people plan for the support that they might require in their old age. Dame Jo said that the timeline for the new Social Care Whitepaper had been pushed out to the spring, so we’ll be awaiting that with great interest.

James Lloyd focused on the need for state involvement but this is currently a big challenge given the shortfall in Local Authority expenditures. Cuts to bus passes or Winter Fuel allowances, new tax rises for older people, using National Insurance payments by people who work beyond 65 and means testing for attendance allowances were all offered up as potential ways to fund the proposals. Of course, none of these would be popular options.

Debate also centred around how to improve the level of top quality care provision there is in the UK. James concluded that to drive provision forward, social care needs to become a voting issue and be given much greater visibility. Elizabeth Feltoe from Age UK highlighted the necessity of protecting those with potentially high needs and low incomes. The priority for Peter Day from ADASS was a more understandable system, especially since most people’s first interaction with the system is often at the point of crisis through either illness or Dementia. He felt the key was information, choices and options for care.

Everyone at the the debate was encouraged to engage with the Department of Health engagement exercise as cross-party talks continue on the findings of the Dilnot report.  There was general consensus on the need to keep Social Care high up on the political agenda to drive the rate of change and make the most of the current opportunity to embrace the recommendations proposed in the Dilnot report.

CQC tighten up inspections

Alan Rosenbach, the Chief Executive of CQC, presented to a packed session  (standing room only!). He updated us on HealthWatch England,  a new consumer voice being set up as an independent body within CQC and due to officially launch in October 2012. It will seek to keep patients at the heart of everything the NHS does, maintain health care outcomes in England among the best in the world and to empower clinicians to deliver results.

The CQC are making great efforts to refine and simplify the regulatory model, to inspect more frequently and focus inspections on the relevant standards. Not all sixteen in any one inspection, in other words! They will aim to take much swifter regulatory action to tackle any non-compliance and for social care there will be a much stronger focus on Safeguarding and Care and Welfare. From April 2012 the new CQC inspection regime will result in providers simply being judged as compliant or non-compliant, as opposed to the current framework of minor, moderate or major concerns.

The new inspection framework will take a three strand approach:

1. All providers will receive an annual, unannounced inspection
2. There may also be inspections based around a thematic approach
3. The ability to make responsive inspections based upon feedback, reports from whistleblowers etc. or where serious safeguarding issues have been flagged will remain in place

The CQC is relaunching their website on 19^th October to provide much simpler and up-to-date information on inspection activity. There will be a summary of CQC’s judgement on the compliance of providers against the 16 essential standards, grouped under five chapters. In a move to make more information available, the site will contain links to all previous inspection reports and Mental Health Act Commission visits will also be archived. A new feature will allow service users to add their feedback to the site.

The previously proposed “Adult Social Care Excellence Scheme” has been sent back to the drawing board after consultation. There were over 500 respondents, and objections included that the proposal didn’t have enough graduation in it;  the scheme was voluntary and had a fee attached to it; and the timeline for implementation was seen as unworkable. Happily the definition of “excellence” generated by the consultation was widely accepted, although less so for the homecare sector.

One interesting piece of news was that if a provider is listed as “non-compliant” it will be no more than 3 months before they will be reinspected, regardless of when the problems have been fixed. It’s certainly in any provider’s interest to make sure they never find themselves in that precarious position – and luckily we’re here to help with that.