From the co-chair
We have set out our agenda for a national funding settlement. Now we make the case, month after month.
Hello, and welcome to the first edition of The Settlement, the monthly campaign newsletter from the Care Association Alliance. This is our update to you: what we have been doing over the past month, what we have achieved, and what we are doing next.
And there has been no bigger month to begin with. The CAA has announced its vision for reform, Building a National Care Service: A Programme for Reform, setting out our agenda for a national funding settlement. The announcement comes ahead of the formal launch, in the coming weeks, of the first in a series of detailed policy papers: the case for fee rates that meet the true cost of care, for access decided by need rather than geography, and for an end to the unpredictable bills families face.
It also comes as Ministers are reported to be poised to abandon plans for a standalone national care service body. For us, that body was never the point: an organisation sitting above the system is not what we called for, and scrapping the idea changes nothing for the providers closing this year or the people waiting for care this year. What has to change is how care is funded, and that is work Ministers cannot defer to 2028.
"Social care does not need its own version of the NHS … what matters is not the structure sitting above the system, but the funding settlement sitting beneath it."
— Melanie Weatherley MBE, co-chair, Care Association Alliance, in Care Home Professional, 29 May 2026
The funding backdrop has not changed. The Chancellor's £4 billion increase by 2028/29 arrives, on its current trajectory, years too late. Local authority fees keep diverging from the cost of safe provision: the Homecare Association puts the minimum sustainable homecare rate at £32.14 and finds only 1% of public contracts meet it, while Skills for Care records a 9.7% workforce vacancy rate. The fee gap and the workforce gap are the same gap, seen from different ends of the same operation. What we have is not a settlement. What we are building the case for is.
Setting out the agenda is the beginning, not the end. The first full draft of the programme paper, the document that turns that agenda into a detailed, costed case, is being written now, and we will keep making that case in public and in Parliament until it lands. That is what The Settlement is for: a brief you can trust to be exact, because credibility is our strongest weapon.
It is also written to be shared. Each issue goes to care associations across the country so you can pass it to your own members, the registered managers, owners and directors who carry the case into every constituency. Inside this issue: the campaign data, the coverage so far, where the case sits in Westminster, and three things to take to your members before we are back in your inbox on 1 July.
Melanie Weatherley MBE
Co-chair, Care Association Alliance
"This announcement is the start of a sustained campaign, not a single moment. The sector cannot wait until 2028, so we will keep the evidence in front of ministers, advisers and members every month until a fair settlement is on the table."
William Walter, founder, Bridgehead Communications
Produced for the CAA by Bridgehead Communications, with strategic counsel from Damian Green, former Deputy Prime Minister with responsibility for social care and now a senior adviser to Bridgehead. Press and campaign enquiries: wwalter@bridgeheadcommunications.com.
Westminster
Your background research for writing to, or meeting, your MP
If you or your members are writing to a local MP, or meeting them at a constituency surgery, this section is your briefing. The three developments below are the live points of contact between the funding case and Parliament right now. Each one gives you something concrete to raise, with the source to back it up, so the case lands as informed rather than general.
The timing matters. The House of Commons rises for the summer recess on Friday 17 July 2026, and does not return until Monday 31 August. That leaves roughly six weeks, and around six Fridays when most MPs hold constituency surgeries (5, 12, 19 and 26 June, then 3 and 10 July), to write or meet before MPs leave Westminster for the summer.
House of Commons · Spending Review · 12 June 2025
The funding line your MP will repeat, and how to answer it
When the Commons debated the Spending Review's health and social care provisions, the government's case was that the settlement is substantial and on track. The CAA's published response called it a package that "fail[s] to deliver the urgent investment social care needs". That distance between the dispatch box and the front line is the opening: when an MP cites the headline figure, the Hansard record is where you show them what it leaves out.
Source: Hansard, 12 June 2025 · read on hansard.parliament.uk
House of Lords · King's Speech debate · 14 May 2026
Peers have put workforce and integration back in play
The King's Speech debate returned adult social care funding, workforce, and integration with the NHS to the floor of the Lords. It matters now because it signals which arguments still have traction before the legislative programme is fixed. Members briefing peers or local MPs should anchor to the points raised here while they are live, not after the bills are drafted.
Source: Hansard, 14 May 2026 · read on hansard.parliament.uk
House of Commons Library · Research briefing CBP-7903
The one citation every MP's office already trusts
When a researcher briefs their MP on social care funding, this standing briefing is the document they reach for. That is exactly why it belongs in your own ask: cite CBP-7903 and you are speaking the language the MP's office already uses, which is half the work of getting the case taken seriously.
Source: House of Commons Library · read the briefing
The programme
What we announced, and what comes next
Building a National Care Service: A Programme for Reform sets out the CAA's agenda: the sector never needed its own version of the NHS, it needs a nationally coherent funding settlement, and reform across funding, commissioning and workforce has to come together rather than arrive in pieces. The announcement sets out that agenda; the detailed policy papers, and the costed case they build, begin to land in the coming weeks.
The first full draft of the programme paper is being written now. It is the document that turns the agenda into a detailed, costed case, and it will be stronger for member evidence. If your association has data or frontline examples the paper should reflect, the campaign team wants them.
Send the campaign team your evidence
