Former senior civil servant Louise Casey has been appointed to two key government roles today.
She has been asked to lead a review into adult social care in England and picked as the government's new lead non-executive director.
Health secretarey Wes Streeting announced this morning that Baroness Casey, a former director general in the Home Office and Department for Communities and Local Government, will lead an independent commission on building a National Care Service to deliver long-awaited reform.
The commission will publish an interim report next year, but is not set to conclude until 2028, a year before the next general election is likely to be held. The first-phase report will look at critical issues and recommend medium-term improvements, with phase two considering how to organise care services and fund them in the long-term.
Casey said the commission “is an opportunity to start a national conversation, find the solutions and build consensus on a long-term plan to fix the system”.
Streeting said he is “delighted” that Casey, who has led several other major government reviews, has agreed to chair the commission. He described her as "one of our country’s leading public service reformers, and Whitehall’s greatest do-er".
In an op-ed for The Guardian, Streeting said Casey has served under Labour, Conservative and coalition governments and is “a trusted, independent figure, who will involve all political parties and the public in the process of building a national consensus around what our country wants from social care, and how a National Care Service can best meet our needs”.
“It will take time, but Casey’s work will finally grasp this nettle and set our country on the path to building a National Care Service that meets the urgent needs of our generation, guarantees quality care to all who need it, and lasts long into the future,” he added.
Streeting said he had written to opposition parties to invite them to take part in the adult social care commission and build a “cross-party consensus” for an enduring national care service.
And he said previous social care reviews, such as Andrew Dilnot’s review on care funding in 2011, will be fed into the commission.
“It’s fair to say that it won’t be starting from scratch,” Streeting said.
Streeting said he has already begun working with Casey on “immediate action we can take today to improve social care”.
Head NED
This afternoon, the Cabinet Office announced that Casey had also been appointed as government lead NED. In the role, she will oversee non-executives from across government to support the delivery of the government's Plan for Change, setting cross-cutting NED priorities and playing a key role in recruitment of non-execs.
She will work closely with the prime minister, Keir Starmer; Pat McFadden, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; and top civil servants including the cabinet secretary Sir Chris Wormald and civil service chief operating officer Cat Little.
Little said Casey "brings extensive experience from leadership roles in and out of the government".
McFadden said Casey will bring "outstanding experience in tackling some of the most difficult issues facing the country" and that this will be "crucial in coordinating non-executive directors across government to deliver our priorities".
Casey first joined government in 1999 from housing charity Shelter to head the then-Labour government’s Rough Sleepers Unit, and went to hold a number of posts in the civil service including heading the national anti social behaviour unit and becoming DG of the Troubled Families Programme in DCLG. She left government in 2017 to focus on voluntary sector and academic work, rejoining in February 2020 to lead an urgent Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government review into rough sleeping and departing again six months later.
In the wake of the Sarah Everard murder in March 2021, she was appointed to lead a review of the Metropolitan Police, which she completed last year.