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Families are the biggest providers of care, yet carers can find themselves cut out of decision-making and bounced between different bureaucracies Caring is a fact of life. Whether a partner falls ill, or a parent needs support as they grow older, or a child is born with a disability – it will affect us all at some point. At times like these, families pull together to support each other. But too often they find that the services there to support them don't do the same. If you care for someone and they need support, you don't really care whether it is the NHS, a local council or nearby mental...

Sponsored Q&A: how can higher education better prepare students for a patient-centered NHS? Join our panel of experts on Friday 17 May 12-2pm BST The inquiry into the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of patients at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust earlier this year, has left an unsettling nervousness around patient safety in the NHS. Between 400 and 1,200 patients are believed to have died between January 2005 and March 2009 as a result of poor care at the hospital. In response, a report by Robert Francis QC proposed 290 recommendations to improve patient safety and care, and combat what...

The report about the scandal at Mid Staffordshire hospital will have a far-reaching impact on the social care sector The long-awaited Francis report will be published on Wednesday – nearly four years after a Healthcare Commission report exposed how patients, families and the public had been failed by the very institution set up to care for them: the NHS. Since 2009, much has been written and said about what went wrong at Mid Staffordshire hospital, why it went wrong and what should be done to prevent it ever going wrong again. Along with the snow in January, we have had another blizzard of articles...

Labour's promising experiment 'barely got out of the lab', yet could teach us a lot about health and social care integration The Labour party's new-found enthusiasm for total integration of health and social care begs the question of what it did to advance such an agenda during 13 years of government. Challenged on this at the launch of Labour's consultation on a potential policy of full integration, the shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, came up with two pieces of evidence: the introduction of personal budgets, on which the jury remains out, at least in terms of change...

Latest report from the health select committee on the Care Quality Commission sets some challenges for the regulator. The committee's chair explains At the start of the current parliament the health committee decided it would undertake an annual hearing with each of the four principal healthcare regulators to examine how well they are delivering their role and objectives. Our latest report on the Care Quality Commission (CQC) – the second we've published – concludes that even five years after it was established, the CQC still needs to define its core purpose and earn the public's confidence...

Now is the time for everyone involved in health and social care to offer their opinions on how the CQC should work The Care Quality Commission (CQC) plays an important role in health and social care. I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to lead an organisation that drives improvements to care by regulating and monitoring the services that provide it. There's no question that CQC had a lot to deliver in its first three years, merging three organisations into one. We brought in a new system of regulation and registered 40,000 organisations that provide care. We introduced a new,...

Medical intervention is appropriate for people who are sick, but not normally for people who are well – whether they are disabled or not Norman Lamb has been the care services minister at the Department of Health for just a few weeks, and it seems that the integration of health and social care services is one of his key interests and policy aims. But there appears to be scant consideration, by Norman Lamb, Dan Poulter or indeed the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, of whether such integration would actually deliver independent living for working age disabled adults – or, for that matter, for older...

The divide between health service and local authorities beggars belief, says health secretary NHS reforms are providing opportunities for integration between health and social care "like we've never had before", claims the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt. Speaking on Thursday at the National Children and Adult Services conference in Eastbourne, in his first speech as health secretary outside the Conservative party conference, he stressed the importance of "forging innovative partnerships between local councils and health services". He referred to the new structures being created...