The power of strength in numbers

THERE’S strength in numbers, we are told, and I tend to agree.

I have long argued that social care’s voice is too disparate, too fragmented to get its message across to government and others.

When numerous small bodies all put up their hands to plead the case for their part of the sector, they become lost in the general maelstrom.

How much stronger it is when one single body fights for a sector.

Take the trade union movement, for example. Whilst it is itself quite splintered – witness the number of different transport and teaching unions, for example – the power and influence of each separate body is nevertheless indisputable.

One trade union can bring huge disruption to the country even when another body representing the same sector has already accepted a new pay offer.

Would that social care had just one such representative body that could wield that much power and influence.

I have long argued that the social care sector needs a unified voice –like a Royal College of Social Care or an Institute of Social Care, to speak on our behalf.

I applauded earlier this year when the National Care Association announced it was to officially merge with the Registered Nursing Home Association to form one organisation. Overnight the newly merged National Care Association became the biggest trade association in the country, with more than 1,100 members.

Its promise, that the merged organisation would bring better collective representation and greater benefits and services for members, mirrored my own thoughts.

I hope that others will follow suit.

Our current organisations are so homogenous that a single body will be created one day, but I know it will take time.

One of the things that people fear is the loss of local representation and connectivity, that their organisation and membership will become lost in a giant conglomerate.

That is understandable, organisations work best when they are in touch with their membership’s unique needs which can vary, according to geographical area, for example.

But there is no need to dismantle local organisations in the model I propose.

I foresee a system working best where local representative bodies are recognised as part of their regional representative body, feeding into a single national body which speaks up for social care.

In my own area of North Yorkshire and York, my own organisation, The Independent Care Group, is one of the founder members of the Yorkshire and Humber Care Association Alliance, a collective set up to better represent care providers across our region.

That alliance is, in turn, a member of the Care Association Alliance, a national alliance of 50 care associations representing more than 7,000 care providers across England. That national Alliance can speak for many thousands of care providers even though its roots – like those of the tree in its logo – remain firmly embedded in the local grounds of individual care providers.

This is surely the way forward. For local bodies to form alliances and create regional and national collectives that can speak up for grass roots care providers and feed their locally sourced issues, concerns and trends up through the branches to one, single unified national social care body.

Maybe, with the right conditions, the seeds we in North Yorkshire and York and others across the country are planting will create just that.