During a free online webinar this month, the leadership team at The King's Fund looked ahead to what to expect in a milestone year for health and social care.
Chief executive Sarah Woolnough highlighted the ‘big set piece announcements' that will be made, including the 10-Year Health Plan in the spring following the Darzi review in September 2024.
‘The 10-Year Plan is meant to be the future of our health service,' Woolnough said.
‘It's also the way in which Government can make good in planning terms on its three shifts that have been talked about a lot – sickness to prevention, hospital to community and analogue to digital.
‘I'm really interested in how Government can try to deal with the here and now and the burning platform of people waiting for a long time, while also looking to the future and setting out plans that hopefully galvanise people to paint a picture of their health system of the future.'
Woolnough also highlighted the 2025 Spending Review in the spring which is likely to set the three-year budget for the NHS. She also stressed the burning need to address social care reform and the ‘frustration' with the lengthy timeline set out for the review led by Baroness Casey.
‘Those of us close to health and social care know that the system is currently not fit for purpose, in desperate need of fundamental reform and that reform can't come quick enough,' she said.
Andrew McCraken, assistant director of external affairs, focused on legislation currently going through Parliament, including the Assisted Dying Bill and the Tobacco and Vapes Bill and changes to the Mental Health Act, as well as the Employment Rights Bill that sets out a fair pay agreement for social care staff.
McCraken also singled out legislation going through the Lords that will set standards so that health and care tech systems can talk to one another. The assistant director also focused on the Government's devolution agenda to push decision making down to combined authority level as a ‘ICS style footprint'. As part of this, he noted plans for locally elected mayors to sit on integrated care partnerships.
The assistant director also warned of the potential for more industrial disputes with Pay Review bodies expected to soon report back on the Government's recommended 2.8% pay rise and warned of the possible implications for long-term reforms should the Government suffer bad local election results in May.
In rounding up, the assistant director offered ‘some pessimism and optimism with a sting in the tail'. On the pessimistic side, he referenced polling by The King's Fund showing satisfaction with the NHS and social care at all-time lows of 24% and 13%, respectively.
More optimistically, McCraken referred to polling before the General Election showing four in 10 voters expected Labour to improve the NHS.
The ‘sting in the tail' for the Government, however, is that 25% of voters expect improvement to be made with one year.
‘2025 is a year of reform but it's also a year of expectant voters,' he said.
Finally, Jo Vigor, assistant director, discussed the need to focus on the enormous pressure on the health and social care workforce during a period of ‘massive change'.
Vigor singled out the current high levels of racism and sexism suffered by workers and the ‘reality of the immense operational and financial pressure that everybody is under'.
The assistant director said technology and the need to keep ‘humans at the heart of care delivery' was a big coming challenge along with the changing profile of workers brought about through implementing the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan.
‘We know there's certain levels of toxicity around some of those changes or in the debates around those profiles,' Vigor concluded.
She stressed the need for leaders to consider the challenges and implications of these changes at a local level.
