Southend Council is refunding £2.3 million after overcharging 586 people care due to a software error dating back to 2018. At Access Social Care, we welcome the refunds but urge councils to audit their systems and ensure people have access to independent advice to protect their benefits and rights.

The inaugural "Joining the Dots" event was made possible with support from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and provided an opportunity for data experts and interested groups to come together to explore the evolving landscape of social care data. The session was kicked off by Amit Kohli, Access Social care’s Head of Data Insight.

We want to work with people who draw on social care and their families to trial a new service. Our legal team will conduct thorough reviews and provide expert advice on how to protect your rights, along with helping you identify and address gaps in care, to ensure you or your family member receive the best possible support. We are offering 5 free audits as part of the trial.

Join us for the 2025 State of the Nation webinar 'From Promise to Practice: What advice sector data tells us about adult social care in Labour's first year of government'. Register here.

Join us online to hear from organisations working on different pieces of the social care data puzzle. From cataloguing datasets for easier discovery, building geographical products that demo data, to AI-boosted data portals that surface insights.

In April 2025 we asked the public to tell us what they thought about social care funding so we could show it to The Casey Commission into Adult Social Care.

The results are in, and it's clear you want greater Government Transparency in social care funding. So do we.

This final episode of the "State of Our Nation" podcast features a heartfelt conversation between co-hosts Kari Gerstheimer and Anna Severwright as they reflect on the series, and discuss the current challenging state of social care.

They double down on the onslaught of recent policy and financial decisions that seem to be negatively impacting people who rely on social care; discuss reactions to the newly launched Casey Commission and look forward to series 3.

This episode of the State of our Nation shines a light on the critical issue of health and social care inequalities faced by Black and other minority ethnic groups in the UK.

Our guest this time is Charles Kwaku-Odoi DL MFPH, Chief Executive of the Caribbean & African Health Network (CAHN), a leading national Black health organisation at the forefront of reducing health inequalities and wider disparities.

ACCESS DENIED! join our fight for an honest and open democracy. If you think it’s time for the government to stop keeping secrets about social care funding please take this short survey so we can pull together evidence for The Casey Commission in April. We don’t have much time so please fill it in today!

Join Kari and Anna as they welcome Svetlana Kotova from Inclusion London to discuss the complexities of charging for social care.

Svetlana Kotova, Director of Campaigns and Justice is a lifelong advocate for disability rights, and shares her journey from her early years in Russia to her impactful work in the UK.

Please do come to this free event which is being run in person and hybrid - with many thanks to Garden Court Chambers who will are kindly hosting this at their London office.

We are holding this at fairly short notice on Tuesday March 11th to give us an opportunity to consider the current MoJ fee consultation and what community care lawyers can do to contribute to that.

.Are strengths-based assessments a "wolf in sheep's clothing?" They're designed to help you focus on your strengths, but in this episode, Kari and Anna ask a critical question: are they actually doing more harm than good?

In November 2024, as part of our Career Pathway work, ASC launched a Practitioners Association for Legal Aid Community Care Lawyers, the 'Community Care Lawyers Group' (CCLG). As its first activity, in January 2025 members of the group collaborated to write, in CCLG's own name, a response to the Law Commission consultation on Disabled Children's Socials Care Law…

In January 2023, under the Conservative administration, the Ministry of Justice commenced a Review of Civil Legal Aid (RoCLA) to "explore options for improving the long-term sustainability of the civil legal aid system". The process is ongoing. As well as attending all stakeholder meetings, together with our Working Group from the Career Pathway project we made the attached written submissions to ensure that the views of Community Care practitioners were represented in the process. The RoCLA process is continuing…

Access Social Care's legal cases on government transparency around how Government have determined sufficiency of funding to meet the social care needs of the population, and the equality impacts of social care funding decisions are ongoing.

We strongly believe that the Commission into adult social care needs to be aware of this case and as an absolute minimum the Government Departments should be disclosing the information to Louise Casey to consider.

Anna Severwright and Kari Gerstheimer talk to guest, James Bullion, former director of Adult Services at Norfolk and president of ADASS, also DHSC lead for social care discharges and recently, interim Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care at CQC.

This omnibus edition of the podcast looks backwards over the past year as well as taking a look forward into 2025.

Access Social Care and a Working Group of lawyers have come together to create the Community Care Lawyers Group (CCLG). Join us!

In 2022, Access Social Care conducted research on the decline in the number of legal aid practitioners in this area of law. We found that the nature and financial sustainability of the work had led to the decline. Here, we address some of the specific problems that community care practitioners face, including use of investigative representation under the legal aid scheme, and how practitioners can access further support.

Over 60 social care organisations have signed an open letter demanding Government transparency for adult social care funding

Anna Severwright and Kari Gerstheimer talk about the why language matters with Bryony Shannon.

Top Tips: Legal Language

There is no such thing as a magic wand but there are magic words. Listen to this section to help you spot when you need to use a phrase to transform your social care outcomes.