For years, adult social care has been the subject of countless reports, reviews, consultations and promises of reform. We have become very good at identifying what is wrong with the system, and it is always the same: workforce shortages, financial pressures, increasing demand, fragmented services and inconsistency in quality.
The problem is not that we don’t understand the issues. The problem is that, despite years of talking about them, too many of those working in and drawing on social care still feel that the conversation is happening around them rather than with them.
That is why the Casey Commission is such an important moment for the sector and provides an opportunity to change that.
The Independent Commission on Adult Social Care, led by Baroness Louise Casey, has been established to look at the future of adult social care and consider both what can be improved in the medium term and the longer-term transformation needed to create a system fit for the future.
A conversation the whole sector needs to be part of
The Commission’s work is not simply about producing another report that sits on a shelf. Through its wider conversation on care, it is seeking to hear from people who draw on care and support, unpaid carers, families, professionals, providers and communities.
That matters because there is no single experience of adult social care.
A registered manager will see the challenges differently from a frontline care professional. A provider will experience the system differently from an unpaid carer. Someone drawing on care and support will have a perspective that no policy paper can fully capture. A former inspector may see patterns that others do not, while a commissioner may understand some of the barriers involved in trying to make a system work across a local area.
All of those experiences are valid, and all of them have something to contribute.
We know what is broken, but we should also look at what is already working
There will understandably be a huge amount of evidence submitted to the Casey Commission about what is failing within adult social care. The pressures on the workforce, funding, access to care, fragmented systems and variation in quality all need to be addressed.
But if we only focus on what is broken, we risk missing something important.
Across the country, people are already finding better ways of doing things. Providers are developing new approaches. Registered managers are finding practical solutions to challenges in their services. People with lived experience are challenging the way services are designed. Consultants, clinicians, inspectors and professionals are sharing their knowledge and experience to help others.
The sector is not short of ideas, and it is not short of expertise either. What we are often short of is a way of connecting it.
One organisation can spend months developing a solution to a problem while another organisation, somewhere else in the country, is trying to solve exactly the same issue. Someone can have years of experience and knowledge that could benefit hundreds of providers, yet there may be no obvious way for that knowledge to be shared.
That is not a criticism of the people within social care. If anything, it is the opposite: it is an acknowledgement that there is a huge amount of expertise within this sector that we have not always been good at bringing together.
Why a group of OpenDoc experts have written to the Casey Commission
Over the past six months, people from across health and social care have been coming together to do exactly that.
OpenDoc began with a practical challenge. Policies and procedures are fundamental to the way care is governed, but access to high-quality documentation has often depended on what an organisation can afford. The result is that the quality of the resources available to a provider can vary significantly, even though the expectations around safe and effective care do not.
A community of more than 100 experts has come together around the idea that knowledge and good practice should be easier to share. The people involved come from different parts of the sector and bring very different experiences, including former CQC inspectors, registered managers, clinicians, consultants, providers, people with lived experience and others who have spent their careers working within health and social care.
The result is OpenDoc: a shared, living library of CQC-aligned policies and procedures that is freely available to care providers, regardless of their size or budget.
But I think what has happened around OpenDoc is becoming about something bigger than policies.
A group of OpenDoc experts have now written an open letter to the Casey Commission. The letter does not claim to have the answer to every challenge facing adult social care. It recognises that sector-led collaboration is not a replacement for meaningful reform around funding, workforce or the wider structural issues facing the system.
Instead, it makes a different argument. We do not have to wait for every structural challenge to be resolved before we start improving things.
The experts behind the letter have seen first-hand what can happen when people with different experiences come together around a shared challenge. The submission argues that technology can help amplify expertise, that cost can create inequality in access to quality resources and, perhaps most importantly, that the system still struggles to learn from itself. Knowledge developed in one part of social care rarely has a clear route to benefit others.
That feels like an important message for the Casey Commission.
What if social care became better at learning from itself?
We absolutely need national reform. There is no getting away from that. The funding of adult social care needs to be addressed. Workforce pressures cannot continue to be managed through goodwill alone, and the experiences of people drawing on care and support need to be at the heart of how future services are designed.
But while those much bigger questions are being debated, we should also be asking how we make better use of the expertise we already have.
The person who has found a better way of supporting their workforce has something to share.
The registered manager who has developed an approach that has transformed their service has something to share.
The person with lived experience who can explain why a system does not work in practice has something to share.
The former inspector who understands where providers repeatedly struggle has something to share.
The provider who has solved a problem that hundreds of others are also facing has something to share.
The challenge is not always a lack of knowledge. Sometimes it is a lack of infrastructure, connection and collaboration.
That is one of the reasons the OpenDoc experts have called on the Casey Commission to recognise the role that sector-led collaboration between practitioners, regulators and technology can play in improving standards. They are also asking for greater recognition of sector-built tools and resources, and for the practical evidence generated through these collaborations to be treated as a valuable source of insight.
OpenDoc is becoming a movement
I have been involved in social care for long enough to know that the sector can sometimes be fragmented. We work in different parts of the country, different types of services and different parts of the system. We have different priorities, experiences and opinions.
That will not change, nor should it, but there are also challenges that we share.
And what I have found particularly powerful about the OpenDoc community is not that everyone agrees with each other. It is that people are willing to bring their experience to the table and contribute to something bigger than themselves.
People are giving their time, sharing their expertise and challenging each other’s thinking because they believe there is value in building something together. That, to me, is what makes OpenDoc more than a policy library.
It is becoming a movement within the sector.
Not a movement that believes it has all the answers. Not one that is waiting to replace the role of government, regulators or providers. But one built on a belief that the people closest to the challenges facing social care should also have a role in developing the solutions.
The open letter to the Casey Commission is an example of that.
A group of people with different backgrounds and perspectives coming together, not on behalf of a single organisation, but as part of a wider community of experts who believe their collective experience has something valuable to contribute.
So, how can you get involved?
The Casey Commission is an opportunity for all of us to contribute to the future of adult social care.
If you work in the sector, share what you see. If you draw on care and support, share your experience. If you are an unpaid carer, talk about the reality of navigating the system. If you run a service, explain what helps and what gets in the way. If you have an idea about how things could work differently, do not assume that it is too small or too local to matter.
The future of adult social care should not simply be shaped by the people who are traditionally invited into these conversations. It should be shaped by the people who live it, work in it and rely on it every day.
And the same is true of OpenDoc.
If you have knowledge, experience or expertise that could help others, there is a place for you in this movement. We are continuing to bring together people from across health and social care who want to contribute, challenge, share and help build something that belongs to the sector.
Because ultimately, OpenDoc will only become what it has the potential to become if the sector builds it together.
The Casey Commission is asking important questions about the future of adult social care. We should absolutely be part of that conversation, but we should not stop there. We should also be asking ourselves what we can do now. What knowledge can we share? What problems can we solve together? And what might happen if, instead of waiting for someone else to create the future of social care, we started taking a more active role in building it ourselves?
Get involved in the Big Conversation on Care here
Read the OpenDoc Experts’ Open Letter to the Casey Commission here
