A Rights-Based Approach to Care’: How will proposed National Care Services impact the elderly care market in Scotland and Wales?
In light of recent proposals for two different National Care Services in Scotland and Wales, Connell Consulting examines the key differences between the two proposals, and the potential impact of social care reforms on the elderly care market.
The challenges facing social care are broadly shared across England and the devolved nations. Growing pressures on services due to high demand and increasingly stretched budgets are resulting in high staff vacancies, long waiting times for assessment, and a quality of care that is not supporting service users to lead fulfilled lives. 2022 saw Wales and Scotland drive forward ambitious proposals for social care reform; both countries share the ambition of a National Care Service that can improve accessibility of social care, and in differing ways, achieve parity with existing NHS models. However, delays to social care reform in England following the Autumn Statement in 2022 reflect the difficulty of implementing reform, particularly in light of political instability. It remains to be seen whether large-scale transformation of social care policy will bring tangible improvements to social care delivery in both nations.