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The Carer Digital
THECARERUK
Issue 50
THECARERUK
Reform of Social Care “Doomed” Unless Issues of Fragile Provider Market are Addressed
A report from the Nuffield Trust warns that years of delay to social care reform and a fragmented market has left provider services unstable and without support for innovation. Social care providers in England have been thrown into the spotlight over the last year as they were hit by Covid-19, however, providers are still too often ignored in the increasingly intense discussion around reforming our failing system says the report which outlines the systemic problems with the way our market for social care operates, and argues that
unless they are resolved, funding reforms alone will fail to deliver sustainable change. The report states that reform of the social care sector will fail if the government’s long-promised plans focus solely on funding and ignore the fragile state of the provider market, adding that years of delay to reform, costs from the pandemic and a lack of understanding and priortisation of social care have eroded an already precarious and fragmented market for organisations providing social care services. Social care providers have been left without support for
innovation, the structures of some large providers leave services unstable and the regulator lacks powers to manage risk or drive improvement, argues the Nuffield Trust. Fractured and forgotten? The social care provider market in England identifies a number of long-standing deficiencies besetting the complex social care provider market, made up of more than 14,000 different organisations in England.
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