Law residential care adult safeguarding adult social care carers community care

The Law Commission’s Tenth Programme of Law Reform includes a project to review adult social care law in England and Wales. The Department of Health is the lead department for this project. The first stage of the project is to undertake a scoping review of adult social care law and to publish a report setting out the proposed agenda for the substantive project. This summary provides a brief overview of the areas of reform identified in the Scoping Report and the direction of our review in each area. 

A project to review 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residential care, community care, adult protection and support for carers is inadequate, often incomprehensible and outdated.  It remains a confusing patchwork of conflicting statues 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 should be provided.