Blog

Loreen Chikwira explores how better listening, collaborative working with minority ethnic women and better support for link workers can improve how social prescribing supports migrant women.

How well is the government’s reform programme tackling the eight key problems in adult social care? Simon Bottery marks the government’s score card and finds it wanting.

Oliver Standing, Director of Collective Voice, and colleagues from the Alliance Group, explore the opportunities offered by England’s new drugs strategy, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.

Sally Warren outlines the rationale behind the social care cap and explains why the government’s planned changes will have an unfair impact on those with lower assets.

Richard Murray has a sense of déjà vu as he writes his 2022 New Year blog. Covid-19 will bring challenges to implementing the many changes in store for the health and care system this year, but the biggest challenge is tackling the workforce shortage – a challenge the government has so far refused to face.

The government’s White Paper has done little to dispel concerns that reform of adult social care is faltering, says Simon Bottery.

Despite the recent criticism, the government’s proposed social care reforms are still a step forward, says Simon Bottery, but the acid test will be its imminent White Paper.

Partnership working can be transformative – if it works well. Here we share two techniques, observed as part of the Healthy Communities Together programme, that can help in forming healthy partnerships.

Siva Anandaciva brings together the recent announcements on health and care spending from the Autumn Budget and Spending Review.

Siva Anandaciva brings together the recent announcements on health and care spending, and considers what the numbers might mean in practice and what might be in store in the upcoming Spending Review.

Richard Murray gives his take on the new health and social care levy, and what’s needed to make sure this new funding delivers real change.

Angela Fell, Director of Northern Heart and Soul in Wigan, outlines why we should move beyond person-centred services to a community-centred approach in order to transform people's health and wellbeing.

Evidence from around the world shows that a cap on costs is only one of several measures that will determine whether England moves towards a better social care system, writes Simon Bottery.

Siva Anandaciva outlines why a health and care levy might not be enough to address the workforce challenges and growing waiting lists the NHS and social care are currently facing.

Rumours of government agreement on how to fund social care abound. Sally Warren explores what the public would expect to see in return for a tax rise to pay for social care.

Sally Warren delves into the history of political calculations in social care… and calls on the current government to be tough enough to make hard choices.

Data, funding and workforce – if the government wants its proposed reforms to the MHA to create change these system-wide enablers are as important as individual changes to legislation. Helen Gilburt consider the issues.

As we reach the one-year anniversary of the start of lockdown in the United Kingdom, Richard Murray outlines how a whole-system response will best support staff and patients and help to tackle inequalities.

Helen Gilburt shares her research into how mental health and social care professionals make decisions around whether to detain people with mental disorders under the Mental Health Act or the Mental Capacity Act – Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. Her research uncovered a range of understandings and misunderstandings which impact on practice.

The national living wage is a crude and ineffective way of raising careworker pay, says Simon Bottery. We need a better way of doing it, linked to wider social care reform.