Health and social care secretary Wes Streeting has agreed to ‘simple asks' on social care from Baroness Louise Casey.
Baroness Casey revealed she had written to Streeting with five ‘simple asks' ahead of her commission's first report on social care.
Speaking this afternoon at the Nuffield Trust Summit, Baroness Casey called for a national safeguarding board for social care on a statutory legal footing.
Other asks included immediate backing to the scale up of dementia trials and faster progress on the modern service framework for frailty and dementia.
Baroness Casey said: ‘These are small, straightforward, simple asks and I will look carefully to see whether they are agreed to and whether they are delivered.
She said this was a ‘moment of reckoning and renewal' for social care and that action on workforce reform did not have wait for her report, noting there was a ‘total reliance on the underpayment of care workers'.
Highlighting the system divide between health and social care, Baroness Casey said there was an ‘extraordinary power differential between the councils and the NHS, which I'm sorry to say the NHS wins every time'.
She said she found it ‘rather astonishing' that Integrated Care Boards were paying private sector firms to find ways to cut continuing healthcare (CHC) budgets, adding: ‘I know exactly how much is spent on CHC and I will watch when it's under review whether it's sucked up into the world of acute hospitals or whether it stays central to its purpose. I'll be watching and I'll be saying if I'm unhappy with it.'
Nuffield Trust deputy director of policy Natasha Curry said: ‘This refreshingly honest speech shows that Baroness Casey is thinking boldly about social care reform and is committed to building a system that works for everyone.'
With the final report not due to be delivered by Baroness Casey's commission until 2028, chief executive of The King's Fund charity, Sarah Woolnough added: ‘There remains a real risk that, even if the Casey Commission delivers robust proposals, they cannot be delivered until the 2030s. That is too long for the people who rely on care and support to wait.'
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said the Government was 'taking decisive action by establishing a new national safeguarding board to better protect vulnerable adults'.
They added: ‘This is about moving faster, cutting through delay and building a social care system that works for everyone.'
