The Care Association Alliance brings together care associations from across England, representing the full breadth of the adult social care sector: residential care, nursing care, home care, and supported living.
The campaign is supported by the Rt Hon Damian Green MP, former First Secretary of State and de facto Deputy Prime Minister, who held direct responsibility for social care policy in Government.
Social care for older people is financed through a model that distributes a national demographic risk across 153 local authority budgets that were never designed to bear it. The result is instability, rationing, and a postcode lottery of access.
Meeting demand needs real-terms growth of 3.1% a year. It has had 0.7%. By 2032/33 the shortfall reaches £8.3 billion a year, the cost of simply standing still.
Even after adjusting each authority for the age profile of its population, so we compare like with like, spend per resident adult still ranges more than two-to-one between authorities under the same statutory framework, and the widest variation is within regions, not between them.
Every English upper-tier authority, shaded by spend per adult. Brighter means higher, from £392 to £960.
We modelled every authority’s spend against its age profile, deprivation, the local cost of care and the level of working-age need. Together those legitimate drivers leave 55 to 66 per cent of the gap between authorities unexplained. Age on its own explains just 13 per cent. The chart below plots each authority’s actual spend against that prediction; the map then shades each authority by the gap between the two.
Not a free NHS-style service. Not the absorption of care into the NHS. Not the end of local delivery. A national framework, built on three principles, within which local care can finally work.
Demographic change is a national phenomenon. Its fiscal consequences should be managed centrally, not spread across 153 budgets of wildly varying capacity.
Meet a nationally defined eligibility threshold and you have a legal right to support, wherever you live.
Care stays commissioned and managed locally, inside a national funding, eligibility and pricing structure. A framework, not a takeover.
A blueprint for the Casey Commission.
The Health Foundation models three levels of ambition. Even the most modest, simply meeting demand, runs to billions a year. The cost of delay rises faster than the cost of reform.
Free personal care without a sustained funding settlement proved unstable. Entitlement alone is not enough.
We are forming a cross-party working group of MPs and Peers to drive the national care funding agenda from within Parliament, chaired by a Member of Parliament ready to lead one of the most consequential domestic policy campaigns of this Parliament.
This is a genuine opportunity to build a national profile on a domestic policy question that will define social care for a generation.
The Casey Commission has a clear mandate and the most complete evidence base in a generation. The Care Association Alliance intends to be the voice that speaks from direct experience of what the system actually requires.
The CAA is the national umbrella body for local care associations in England, a member-led organisation with no paid officers. All its functions are carried out by its member associations, which collectively represent over 10,000 independent care providers across every English region.
The CAA works locally, regionally and nationally, partnering with government, commissioners and health bodies to advocate for a sustainable, properly funded adult social care system. It is a founding participant in the Care Provider Alliance, which unites the ten main national associations representing independent and voluntary adult social care providers in England.
Globe House, Park Lane, Halesowen, B63 2RA · info@caa.care · www.caa.care