ADASS president promises adult social services will 'give people better lives than they have now'

Sandie Keene, incoming president for the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services has spoken to audiences at the Association’s spring seminar.

During her speech she urged social care departments to embrace the future, despite the ‘ever-present national fiscal challenge’ and outlined her bold vision of the future of care services in the UK.

Ms Keene said: “The balance of contribution from the various sectors in the system is changed. Where local authorities may become smaller in size they need to be bigger in the way they influence the public and their partners.”

Comparing directors of adult social care services to alchemists turning base metals into gold, she said: “We have a challenge today to turn our smaller, base budgets into richer, more effective ones, greater in value than what we started out with – and of gold-standard quality.”

She described, in detail, schemes which have been pioneered by a number of brand companies that actively involved themselves in long term relationships with local Governments, third sector and social enterprises.

“Our vision is for business to be more civic. And for councils to be more enterprising in the context of a new social contract with individuals and communities,” she said.

Ms Keele combined the vision for councils to be more enterprising with the drive towards integration of services and described her desire for a system which “focuses on individuals and their care, rather than on organisations and their structure.”

She added that redesigning services at individual and community levels will develop a bottom up approach to integration, engaging front line workers with the changes that Ms Keele said will "challenge the enormous duplication of interventions across health and social care".

In the speech Ms Keele championed the benefits of new technology, saying: “The real power of the digital revolution is about citizen connectivity, or 'user data’. I am inspired by the potential in developments such as the e-market place where transactions are direct between the person and supplier of service, and by the use of apps to inform and engage with a view to control and self-management.”

Mr Keele closed her talk to the spring seminar by concluding: “Aiming for gold in social care, like the alchemist, we will also achieve so much more, and in so many ways.

“In aiming for an integrated health and social care system, we will give people better lives than they have now, with better care and support. We will be inventive and innovative, build new partnerships, use new technologies, drive up quality, drive down costs, and above all, strengthen communities.”