When the Chancellor recently announced he had signed up four government departments for 30% cuts as part of the next spending round, I was convinced local government would not be one of them. It was. So, what do we do now? Councils are on their knees, their eyes understandably more firmly fixed on dwindling budgets, not on how to deliver dynamic social care responses to people and families in their communities. These people need some kind of support to get on with their lives. And they need it now. The King’s Fund tells us that social care spending is at…

Here is the story of one council learning to do things very differently. We recognised that the traditional approach, involving a large call centre diverting people away or passing them through to social care teams, was simply ‘sucking people in’. It had to change. Moreover, most of the community teams had become part of the ‘assessment for services’ factory. This to some extent presumed the solution for people was some reablement-focused activity, mainly supporting people coming out of hospital and/or formal paid care services. Although this system worked efficiently and well, it was never going to meet the requirements of…