Baroness Casey’s recent speech at the National Children and Adult Services Conference in Liverpool is a powerful reminder of the challenges facing social care. However, the findings from new research commissioned by her team will come as little surprise to those of us working in the sector, who have been highlighting these issues for many years.

What is welcome is Baroness Casey’s determination to confront these longstanding issues and her call for a new settlement for care, built around the values of dignity, decency and our shared responsibility to look after one another.

The prominence and level of priority that Prime Minister Andy Burnham has given to social care, and the momentum he has created by accelerating the Casey Commission, needs to be maintained.

We must seize this opportunity to turn that recognition into meaningful reform and deliver the sustainable, properly funded social care system that people who depend on it, their families and the workforce deserve.