We provide free legal advice and support to people in England to get the care they are entitled to.
What is social care?
What is the issue? and what is our solution?
How we work
What is social care?
Social care is care and support for people who need extra help to live safe, independent and fulfilling lives. Social care can change lives.
Social care can include: residential care support with personal care such as eating, washing, or getting dressed, personal assistants or carers to support when going out shopping or socialising or specialist recreational services.
Most of us will need social care at some point in our lives. Demand for care is rising sharply as people are living longer due to advances in health care and better standards of living. But our social care system is not keeping pace.
Only 43% of people who request social care from their local authority receive it.
There are at least 1.5 million people living without the care they need.
Only 43% of people who request social care from their local authority
receive it.
What is the issue?
Everyday millions of older and disabled people are denied the social care they need. Most local authorities can’t meet the growing demand for care, none are confident they can meet their legal duties in the future. This affects all of us, we will all need social care at some point.
We all have a right to hold public bodies to account. But most of us cannot afford lawyers so rely on legal aid. The 92% drop in legal aid cases since 2010 means we have nowhere to turn. Without access to justice, our rights do not exist. The rule of law is broken.
Our solution
Access Social Care provides free legal advice and information for people with social care needs, helping achieve a better quality of life.
We work with communities to increase knowledge of the law and our rights. We highlight the gap left by cuts to Legal Aid and provide advice for those who can’t afford it.
With a 98% success rate, our network of lawyers and barristers ensure fair access to justice when things go wrong. We collaborate with social services whilst ensuring legal obligations are met.
We are working towards a future where social care is adequately funded, and we all get the support we need.
Access Social Care is:
Delivering free legal support so we all get the social care we have a right to.
Providing access to a network of solicitors and barristers.
Highlighting the gap left by Legal Aid to ensure access to justice.
Working with communities and public bodies to uphold the rule of law.
Shaping a future where social care is adequately funded.
How we do it
Access Social Care ensures people get the social care that they have a right to, so that they can live fulfilled lives in the community. We link our legal knowledge to other organisations across the disability and older persons sector whose front line staff all have regular contact with people with social care needs and their families.
Empower
By collaborating with our members, who are provider and advocacy organisations, we provide legal education to people with social care needs, care managers, information and advice professionals and advocates so they can spot a legal issue when it arises.
Enforce
By using subscriptions to employ more caseworkers, by joining forces with lawyers working pro-bono, and by developing an online legal chatbot, we improve access to early legal help to challenge unlawful behaviour.
Challenge
Through data gathering and analysis of our advice and casework we evidence trends of unlawful behaviour. We use our data to influence, to hold public bodies to account and bring about system change.
Why we do it
In 2015 a ground-breaking law came into force: the Care Act. The Care Act gives people in England greater rights to care than ever before, and puts the needs of individuals at the heart of our care system.
However, years of austerity have left our care system severely under-funded.
Social care law vs social care funding
Since 2010, there has been a £7 billion cut in social care funding despite the increase in demand on services. This funding gap is forecast to widen even more over the coming years. There has been some government investment in the last few years but this has not been enough to solve the funding crisis, and local authorities are increasingly acting unlawfully to balance their books. People have stronger legal rights to care than ever before, but these rights are not being realised as more and more vulnerable people experience unlawful cuts to their social care.
Access to justice
As it has become harder to get care, so it has become harder to get legal advice and representation due to cuts in legal aid (publicly funded legal support). Most of the people we support qualify for legal aid, but legal aid cuts mean less people can access the legal help they need to enforce their rights to care.
What drives us
We are a team of passionate individuals who want to ensure that people get the social care that they have a right to.
We want a social care system that is properly funded, readily available, and fairly distributed; enabling people to choose to live fulfilled and meaningful lives.
Without access to justice, legal rights might as well not exist.
What we are doing
We are a legal charity driving social justice in the field of social care. We provide legal advice and support to empower people in England to get the care they are entitled to.
Our members are working directly with people with care requirements who access our services. We work with law firms to secure pro bono support for the people we represent.
We work with others in the sector to highlight the most pressing legal issues and to secure system-wide change.
Driving justice in the field of social care
Everything we do is about achieving the best outcome for people with care needs and their families.
Our approach – managing conflict and living to our values
Our purpose is to improve the lives of people with social care needs. Our approach is to do this by collaborating with all parts of the system.
We know that whilst we positively and constructively challenge public bodies through our casework, we can still work effectively with leaders from public bodies to drive improvements to policy and practice.
Occasionally in the course of our work with our members who are social care providers, and with public bodies, we come across pockets of poor practice, unlawful behaviours, safeguarding or human rights concerns. When this occurs, we live to our values – we fearlessly do what is right not what is easy, challenging injustice and driving for change.
We are firm throughout our relationship with our members that we only work with providers who are willing to engage with us, as human rights and specialist community care lawyers, to secure continuous improvements in the interests of the people in their services . This approach is built into our contract and there are some social care providers that we would not work with because their leadership are not willing to work with us in this way.
To help us with design, delivery and decision making we work with experts by experience, ensuring our work is informed by the voices of the people our charity exists to serve. Our advisory panels and community partners support with this work.