During his speech, Andy Burnham made three announcements giving an insight into what he sees as priorities for change in the sector.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Bringing forward the independent Casey commission into social care<\/p>\n
Mr Burnham said he has asked Baroness Louise Casey to \u201cexpedite\u201d her review by a year.<\/p>\n
Under Sir Keir Starmer, a commission into social care headed by Baroness Casey was announced in early January 2025, which formally began in April that year.<\/p>\n
Its first report, with short-term recommendations, is expected this autumn, but the second phase, making long-term recommendations for the sector, was given a deadline of reporting by 2028.<\/p>\n
Baroness Casey, speaking to a committee of MPs last month, had already indicated the overall work might be completed sooner.<\/p>\n
Mr Burnham said on Wednesday: \u201cThe first thing is to ask Baroness Louise Casey to bring forward her review by a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, working with Yvette (Cooper) and with Angela (Rayner) and other colleagues, we want to expedite that review.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ideally want to do it even sooner, but we\u2019ve got to be realistic. But if we say a year from now that we have that independent review, then I think we can rise to this challenge with the urgency it requires.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baroness Casey has launched a Big Conversation On Care which she said will be a \u201cgame changer that tries to renegotiate the social contract\u201d.<\/p>\n
It is open to all the public in England online, and is expected to gauge views on issues such as what social care should look like, who should pay for it and what support the state should provide.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Working with other political parties<\/p>\n
Mr Burnham told of the \u201cscars\u201d he has from previous attempts to reform adult social care.<\/p>\n
As then-health secretary in 2010 his plans for a 10% tax on people\u2019s estates after they died to fund a proposed national care service were scuppered when they were branded by the Conservatives as a \u201cdeath tax\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Burnham said it is the \u201cright thing to do\u201d to hold early cross-party talks to gain some consensus and common ground.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI stood on the steps of Downing Street just a few days ago, and I said I wanted to create a new way of doing politics in this country \u2013 more problem solving, less point scoring \u2013 and this is the first big test of that, and I mean what I say. We won\u2019t fix this through politics as usual.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Burnham said he had based his invites to the meeting on Wednesday on approaches from Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey in recent days.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Social care workforce reform<\/p>\n
Mr Burnham said he wanted to \u201cimmediately\u201d focus on the social care workforce, rather than waiting for the Casey review to be completed.<\/p>\n
He paid tribute to the skills of care staff, insisting they \u201cshould be the best-paid people in society, not the worst\u201d, and suggested carers should be more integrated with the NHS workforce.<\/p>\n
According to a Skills for Care report, in December the median hourly rate of pay for a care worker in the independent sector was \u00a312.60.<\/p>\n
That organisation, which is the strategic workforce development and planning body for adult social care in England, has suggested up to 470,000 more posts may be needed in social care by 2040 to keep up with projected growth in the number of over-65s in the population alone.<\/p>\n
While Mr Burnham described the fair pay agreement for social care staff \u2013 due to come in in the financial year 2028\/29 \u2013 as a \u201cmajor step forward\u201d, he indicated his keenness for \u201cbigger reform\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the fair pay agreement \u2013 which will set minimum standards for pay and terms and conditions for care workers \u2013 is \u201ca massive building block of a national care service\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said he was now tasking the ministerial group on social care \u2013 led by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, and involving Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary Angela Rayner and Chancellor John Healey \u2013 \u201cto look at how we turn the fair pay agreement into a bigger reform to improve the social care workforce\u201d and \u201clift it closer to NHS standards\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Burnham also said he wanted to improve \u201ctraining and the wider support\u201d for carers, saying there must be \u201cprogression routes for young people coming into social care, so they can progress from social care into NHS positions as well\u201d.<\/p>\n
Unions welcomed the PM\u2019s comments on the workforce, with the TUC saying \u201ccontinued and increased funding will be essential to ensure the urgent workforce challenges can be meaningfully addressed\u201d and Unite saying reforms must see investment in care workers \u201cso they have the decent pay, respect and secure jobs they deserve\u201d.<\/p>\n
Unison, which said it is the biggest union in the care sector, said: \u201cImproved pay, on par with staff employed by the NHS, and a better career path are vital to improve the status of the job and attract people to the profession.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During his speech, Andy Burnham made three announcements giving an insight into what he sees as priorities for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7786,39838,145,1316,14,5,6],"class_list":["post-93409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-andy-burnham","tag-fiona-phillips","tag-gmtv","tag-mental-health","tag-politics","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117006347992200027","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}