Herald Express: Baroness Casey delivers damning update on social care

Amid the Iran war, spiralling oil prices and various other crises happening in the world, a piece of news came and went in a flash that could have serious implications for us all.

On Friday 6^th March, Baroness Louise Casey delivered her first speech on social care since the government commissioned her to conduct a review into the sector last year. That decision was heavily criticised at the time by the Liberal Democrats. This had nothing with Baroness Casey’s appointment, but centred on a simple, but vital question: do we need yet another review into social care? 

We have had multiple reviews in recent years which all came to the same conclusion: our social care system is broken and needs fixing fast. Last year’s announcement was met with the creeping suspicion that this government, which has a penchant for consultations and commissions, was delaying taking the hard decisions once again. 

But having listened to Baroness Casey’s speech, delivered with her trademark brutal honesty, some of those concerns have been tempered. As expected, she laid bare a care system on the brink of collapse, with near-bankrupt councils straining under soaring dementia cases and a workforce crisis which is long-standing and only going to worsen under Labour’s new immigration rules. 

She also said the care system is fragile and divided, strewn with drawn out, anxiety-ridden discussions over who pays for what, and that care, once it finally arrives, can be piecemeal, patchwork and callously delivered, with thousands dying each year while waiting for support. 

Sadly, none of this was new information, but then Ms Casey went a step further, urging the Health Secretary to act now rather than wait for her report’s publication in 2028. Specifically, she called for Wes Streeting to invest immediately in dementia trials and the creation of a full-time “dementia tsar”, as well as fast-track care for people diagnosed with motor neurone disease. 

As someone who recently led a debate on dementia care in parliament, this was music to my ears. Dementia is undoubtedly one of the most urgent health and care challenges facing our society. It is the leading cause of death in the UK and the numbers of those living with the disease is expected to rise sharply. 

According to NHS England, one in 11 people over the age of 65 has dementia. That rises to one in six for those over 80. In Devon, which has one of the oldest populations in England, the issue of rising dementia cases is not just coming; it is already here. 

Yet, despite this, dementia remains a hidden problem. Baroness Casey was absolutely right in saying dementia should be regarded not as “an inevitable part of ageing” but as a “clinical matter” whose patients have “neurological, health conditions”. 

Ms Casey went further in a letter to the Health Secretary, stating: “despite the well-known prevalence of dementia…I have not found a system set up to tackle this problem with the same energy we have seen in the face of other conditions”. 

I said as much myself during my debate and called on the government to expand dementia training across the care sector, improve diagnosis rates – which are particularly low in Devon – and a clear strategy which supports people with dementia and their families at every stage of the condition. 

Pursuing these three asks is not only the right thing to do; it will save money for the NHS in the long run. It is time that we treated dementia care not as a burden, but as a vital part of building a compassionate and sustainable future for everyone affected.