REFORM of social care in England should focus not on independence, but on “interdependence”, and there must be a shift in collective attitudes towards older people and people with disabilities, a paper endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Sarah Mullally, says.
In the General Synod next month, Archbishop Mullally is because of introduce a motion to support the 2023 report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care, which was chaired by the Rt Revd James Newcome (then Bishop of Carlisle) and Dr Anna Dixon (now MP for Shipley). It urges the Government to attract on the commission’s recommendations because it sets up the National Care Service.
The commission called for a transparent Christian vision to fix the social-care system: a plan of motion that may give equal dignity to everyone. “The heart of this report is a deeply Christian understanding of what it looks prefer to live together in community, with people caring for and supporting each other in relationships characterised by mutuality and interdependence” (News, 27 January 2023).
There would need to be a change within the attitudes underpinning the present system, the commission warned. “A reason why we don’t value care and support is due to underlying social attitudes towards age, disability, and mental illness.”
It identified the necessity for a “visible and broad coalition across England, including individuals with lived experience of care, politicians of all stripes, civic institutions, and faith communities”.
The briefing paper (GS 2419) published last week summarises the findings, offers theological reflection, and sets out the part for the Church to play in enabling the total participation of people that draw on care and support.
It sets it within the context of adult social care and Baroness Casey’s Independent Commission on Adult Social Care, formed on the request of the Prime Minister, which began its work in April 2025. Financial pressures on councils are essentially the most quoted reason for unmet need, the paper says. “Many people could also be only receiving basic support, not what could also be required to enable their flourishing, with investment in relationships and participation in community life.”
The Archbishops’ Commission, the paper says, “gently pushed back on the thought of independence being a prized goal for social care, as a substitute specializing in interdependence as a needed condition for recognising our fundamental need for each other”.
The first of the Archbishops’ Commission’s findings was the re-examination of non-public and collective attitudes to older people and people with disabilities, with the popularity that “at different times in our lives just about all of us will either be caring for somebody or being cared for by someone. . . Care and caring usually are not binary states, but fairly are dynamic, with often fluid boundaries.”
It called for the event of a National Care Covenant, led by national government in partnership with a big selection of stakeholders. It also advisable several technical reforms to offer those drawing on care and support more say over the services that they received, and responsibility for managing their very own budget, “making the social-care system easy, consistent, and person-centred as a part of a protracted term aspiration that access to care and support should turn out to be a universal entitlement”.
The report listed the Church’s response to the challenges in social care as “pastoral, practical and prophetic”, the paper says. It describes the applying of the theological principle of imago Dei — that every one human beings are created within the expressed image of God — to national examinations of adult social care as “vital and radical”.
Churches can and do play a crucial part on this in diverse ways, it suggests, by, amongst other things, supporting their congregations and wider communities, reducing loneliness, and “ensuring that those that draw on care and support are enabled to participate fully in church life”.
The paper refers to “many practical examples of church-based provision in partnership”, including through initiatives comparable to Anna Chaplaincy, Renew Wellbeing spaces, Parish Nursing, and the Places of Welcome network. “Every parish church plays a key role on this, by being accessible, welcoming, and inclusive places and by supporting each other in community.”
It also highlights the Church Urban Fund (CUF), with which the Archbishops’ Commission is planning to develop a package of resources. It says that CUF could be “glad to listen to from any parishes who could be all for participating in the event of those resources”.
The paper concludes: “It is crucial that we profit from the upcoming opportunity for reform.”
