Status: This project is complete. The Government has stated that it will consider our conclusions, with a view to introducing legislation in the second session of this Parliament
The adult social care project was concerned with reviewing the law relating to the provision of adult social care in England and Wales.
The legislative framework for adult residential care, community care, adult protection and support for carers is inadequate, often incomprehensible and outdated. To this day, it remains a confusing patchwork of conflicting statutes enacted over a period of 60 years. There is no single, modern statute to which service providers and service users can look to understand whether (and, if so, what kind of) services can or must be provided.
The overall aim of the project was to provide a clearer, modern and more cohesive framework for adult social care.
The project
We published a scoping report on 26 November 2008, which delineated the scope of the project and provided a detailed agenda for reform. The scoping report is available below.
On 24 February 2010, we published a consultation paper setting out a number of provisional proposals to reform the law governing adult social care in England and Wales. We then undertook a broad public consultation on these provisional proposals, which closed on 1 July 2010. The consultation paper and analysis of responses are both available below.
Following consultation, we formulated our final recommendations for reform set out in the final report.
Our recommendations
Our final recommendations are set out in the report, Adult Social Care, which we published on 11 May 2011 (available below). This landmark report on social care recommends the most far-reaching reforms of adult social care law seen for over 60 years. We believe the recommendations will bring much needed clarity and accessibility to this key area of the law, which touches the lives of so many citizens.
The publication of the final report marks the completion of the Law Commission’s project on adult social care. We welcome the announcement in the Queen's Speech on 9 May 2012 of a draft Bill on adult social care. Frances Patterson QC, the Law Commissioner responsible for the Commission's review of adult social care law, said: "We are very pleased that the Government is pressing ahead with reform of adult social care legislation which is in urgent need of reform".
Hear leading figures in the social care field discuss our recommendations in a Community Care podcast.
