A new independent commission looking into social care reform, led by Baroness Louise Casey, will begin in April.
The commission comes alongside staff being trained to carry out more health checks in a bid to improve the treatment of elder and vulnerable people and relieve pressure on the NHS as well a funding boost for local services.
She said: “You can’t rebuild the system in a short period of time, but they do need to bring the timescale down. It feels like it has been kicked back into the long grass, because by the time it takes to get the full report and have any action taken as a result we are getting into the next election.
“The other thing that is quite worrying for us as a sector is going to be extra delegation of health tasks that would normally be carried out by a GP or nurse.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting (Photo: Ben Whitley/PA Wire)Other measures included in order to achieve the Government’s aim for a National Care Service, are increased use of technology and new national standards to improve support for elderly to live at home for longer.
Despite Labour’s plans, providers have already warned tax rises and higher staffing costs announced in the Budget could force some care homes, which often operate under small margins, to close.
The sector welcomed an extra £600m (£1.3bn overall) in funding to local authorities for adult and children’s social care. But care groups say the money would be “wiped off instantly” by increased staffing costs with more than 100,000 vacancies last year remaining in the sector last year.
Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said: “It’s a good idea to equip care professionals to carry out some simple health checks, indeed some already do this. There is a huge shortage of community nurses and meanwhile care professionals are there on the ground working with older people whose health is often fragile, so this approach makes a lot of sense.
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Read MoreConcerns have also been raised over the lack of specific reference to autistic people or people with learning disabilities.
“There is currently no mention specifically of people with autism and learning disabilities and we need to be assured about their inclusion in the new independent commission and that their needs and requirements are fully understood.”
He said: “That means that whoever’s in government, not just in five years’ time, but 10 years, 20 years, 30 years’ time, hopefully we will have built the national consensus. That means that every government delivers for social care in the way that, frankly, successive governments have failed in the past.
The Health Secretary also said using an insurance system to fund care is something “genuinely worth Louise Casey looking into”.
The previous Conservative government proposed a cap on lifetime social care costs but that has been scrapped by Sir Keir Starmer.
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