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Law Commission calls for ‘outdated patchwork’ of legislation to be scrapped in favour of a single statute The most far-reaching reforms of adult social care law in 60 years are needed to improve the lives of the most vulnerable, the Law Commision has said. The commission, which recommends law reform, said a single, clear, modern statute and code of practice were needed to pave the way for a more coherent social care system. The fragmented and flawed current laws were out of date, more than 40 statutes needed scrapping or amending. and thousands of pages of often contradictory guidance must be consigned to history, the commission said. Frances Patterson QC, the law commissioner leading the review, said: “Today signals a significant step in moving us closer to a clearer and more coherent framework for adult social care. “Our recommendations will bring much-needed clarity and accessibility to this important area of the law and have a major, beneficial impact on the lives of many of our most vulnerable citizens.” Patterson said the changes would help “protect the strong rights that exist in adult social care law while, at the same time, ensuring that emerging policy objectives, such as personalisation and self-directed support, are recognised fully in statute law”. The government is expected to bring in legislation next year after reviewing the recommendations. In its review of adult social care, the commission said current laws were “an often-incoherent patchwork of legislation” that made interpretation of the law “complex and time-consuming”. Under the proposals a unified statute would set out a single, clear duty to assess a person and put the individual’s wellbeing “at the heart of decision-making”. The assessment would “focus on the person’s care and support needs and the outcomes they wish to achieve”, rather than having any service-led approach. A duty to assess carers would be introduced, removing the requirement for a carer to provide “a substantial amount of care on a regular basis”, which was criticised for being an “overly complex” test. Instead an assessment would be made simply if the carer may have needs that could be met by the provision of carers’ services. Once those needs were established “the authority must make arrangements for those services to be provided”, the commission said. Restrictions on using cash payments in lieu of services to purchase long-term residential accommodation would be lifted under the recommendations, the commission said. The new scheme would set out powers to protect individuals from abuse and neglect, placing a duty on local authorities “to investigate adult protection cases or cause an investigation to be made by other agencies”. Such an inquiry would be triggered if an individual appeared at risk of any harm, rather than at risk of significant harm as set out in existing guidance. Adult safeguarding boards would be given a statutory footing for the first time under the plans. The commission wants the power for a person to be removed from their home to be scrapped because it was “incompatible with the European convention on human rights, has several operational difficulties and is in practice obsolete”. Michelle Mitchell, charity director at Age UK, welcomed the “radical overhaul”, saying the current system was “a catastrophe waiting to happen”. The legal framework was “a complicated mess that sometimes local authorities either do not understand, or deliberately choose to ignore”. “The Law Commission’s recommendations provide a one-off opportunity to replace this dog’s breakfast with a clear, logical and consistent framework,” Mitchell said. “It is important, as we move forward to actual legislation, that political wrangling does not result in this clarity being lost. “Older people who enter the care system often feel that they have been stripped of their rights and of their status as equal citizens before the law. “An increasing number of cases, at great expense, are ending up in court with a judge having to decide what the law actually means.” The care services minister Paul Burstow welcomed the report, saying it “provides foundation for the most significant single reform of social care law in 60 years”. “The current law on adult social care lacks coherence, is hard to understand, and looks back to the Poor Law for its principles,” he said. “We now have the opportunity to update the law for the 21st century, placing principles of personal control and independence at the heart of social care law. “The Law Commission’s work provides us with a strong foundation upon which to build as we develop legislative reforms. “We will take this work together with the recommendations of the independent Commission on the Funding of Care and Support in the summer to set out a comprehensive reform in our care and support white paper.” Andrew Tyson, of the social care charity In Control, said reform was “long overdue”. But he warned that giving ownership of the support plans to local authorities rather than the individuals would have a detrimental effect as well as adding unnecessary and expensive bureaucracy. “These proposals represent an important step forward and, if implemented, should make the law simpler and more straightforward,” he said. “Overall the plans are positive but fall just short of the radical overhaul that we would have liked to have seen.” There were concerns that some of the proposals unamended might “unintentionally hinder the progress of personalisation and even go against the ethos of self-directed support”. “Defining a list of community care services is not in any way helpful and will restrict a person’s ability to achieve outcomes in an efficient self-directed manner,” he said. “If this is implemented we may well end up in a situation where people do not receive support if their outcomes fall outside of these categories.” David Congdon, head of campaigns and policy for the learning disability charity Mencap, warned that many local authorities were cutting support by placing tight eligibility criteria on services. “Court cases in the media recently, such as Birmingham city council’s plans to limit social care to those in critical need only, are the result of a system struggling to cope with limited resources,” he said. “A national set of guidelines and eligibility criteria would put an end to the postcode lottery and give everyone an equal opportunity to access the support they need. “The new statute would streamline over 40 laws that date back over 60 years, making the system work better for both people who need social care support and also for the local authorities themselves.” Social care guardian.co.uk