Baroness Louise Casey, who is leading a government review of social care, has highlighted physiotherapy as a key part of the big picture.
Speaking at the National Children and Adult Services Conference in Liverpool, Baroness Casey drew on research commissioned by the Independent Commission on Adult Social Care that illustrated a patchwork of services and access.
Ahead of the speech, Baroness Casey told R4's Today programme that personalised care must be at the heart of future health and social care delivery.
She said: 'The most telling thing is the fact that nobody really sees the importance and human value of personal social care. I think that over time the National Health Service has become much more pulled into becoming a National Hospital Service that very much concentrates around medical treatment and surgery, and of course that's incredibly important.'
By the same token we do not put the same value on someone recovering from a stroke and needs physiotherapy and occupational therapy.
Sara Hazzard, CSP assistant director and co chair of the Community Rehabilitation Alliance, responded to Baroness Louise Casey's warnings regarding adult social care:
Baroness Casey is right that the system does not place the same value on supporting someone to recover from a stroke through physiotherapy and occupational therapy as it does on their acute hospital treatment.
'Yet rehabilitation is fundamental to helping people regain independence, improve their quality of life and reduce their need for ongoing care.'
You cannot fix social care without fixing healthcare. The two are inextricably linked, and failures in one inevitably create greater pressures in the other.
'Baroness Casey's call for a new settlement for care is an important one, but that must recognise the relationship between the two systems and, above all, the impact on the people who rely on them.'
'Coming in the same week that new figures show just 6.4 per cent of stroke survivors in England, Wales and Northern Ireland received the recommended level of rehabilitation, the need for a joined-up approach has never been clearer.'
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