Adult social care is under huge pressure across the UK. Since devolution, adult social care systems in England, Scotland and Wales have diverged but face many of the same challenges: rising demand, increasing complexity of need, escalating costs, market instability, workforce challenges and limited financial resources and capacity to meet all these pressures.
Despite these differences, a National Care Service (NCS) model has been proposed in each country as a way to build a fairer, high-quality and financially sustainable social care system. Yet, as the three nations take different routes towards that ambition, their experiences raise important questions about what it really takes to reform adult social care.
