The State of the Nation Report 2025: What Providers Need To Know
More than a year into the new Labour government, Access Social Care’s State of the Nation (SoTN) 2025 report offers a clear picture of how the social care sector has been affected. While the report praises services’ resilience and the value of partnerships between providers, service users, families, and advice organisations, it also highlights a number of growing issues. For example, demand for advice has risen, safeguarding risks have intensified, Mental Capacity Act (MCA) disputes are becoming more frequent and complex, and unpaid carers are under increasing strain.
In this blog, our team at ClouDoc explores the report’s key insights and what they reveal about the sector after the government’s first year in office. We also discuss how you can use these findings to strengthen your service’s operations.
Increased demand for social care advice
Helplines across England recorded a 7.5% increase in people seeking advice about adult social care in 2024–25, continuing a long-term trend that amounts to a 99.5% growth since 2019–20. The report links this rise to an increase in workforce instability, notably recruitment/retention problems and heavier reliance on agency staff. While vacancies within the sector fell to around 8.3% in 2023/24, helped by international recruitment, turnover remains high, and the vacancy rate is still far above other sectors. This disrupts continuity of care for people who need familiar carers to stay safe, which in turn drives more safeguarding concerns and pushes more people to seek advice via helplines.
To reduce risk and demand on helplines, the report’s analysis points to strengthening day-to-day continuity and governance. This includes prioritising continuity of staff, minimising single-visit agency placements wherever possible, logging and reviewing missed/late calls and enhancing handover checklists.
Rising safeguarding concerns
People seeking safeguarding-related advice alone rose 45.6% in 2024–25 vs 2023–24, with the report also marking a notable shift in the nature of the risks being reported: where helpline safeguarding calls had previously centred on abuse by another person, a significant share now involve self-harm and suicidal thoughts. Several organisations have had to increase wellbeing support for helpline staff as a result.
Older people’s services also link rising safeguarding concerns to basic hardship over winter, with more people unable to afford heating or food; the Local Government Association (LGA) similarly associates financial insecurity with increases in neglect and financial abuse referrals.
In response to these findings, we recommend that providers review their safeguarding policies and procedures to ensure they are well-equipped to promote the mental wellbeing of service users. Services should also consider refreshed training and supervision and ensure that they have clear escalation pathways into mental-health services.
On your ClouDoc account, you have access to comprehensive policies and procedures that are designed for Ofsted and CQC compliance, including detailed safeguarding and mental health policies.
Increased mental capacity queries
Mental capacity queries rose 62.9% in 2024–25 vs 2023–24, and are now more than ten-times higher than in 2019–20. The SoTN report suggests this surge reflects uncertainty about how decisions are being made for people who may lack capacity, alongside gaps in assessment and documentation and failures to involve service users (and their families) in key decisions, potentially breaching the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Helplines increasingly hear from relatives who feel excluded from best-interests decisions that have major consequences, such as where someone lives, and from callers seeking clarity because local guidance and support are insufficient.
To prevent these issues, service providers should ensure that all decision-specific assessments are fully documented, including the rationale for best-interests decisions, details of consultations with the individual and those familiar with their circumstances, and justification for any restrictions applied. Comprehensive procedures for supporting individuals who lack capacity are set out in the Mental Capacity Act and Deprivation of Liberty policies available on ClouDoc. Adhering to these policies ensures a consistent, legally compliant approach to decision-making and provides clear evidence to regulators of good governance and accountability.
Unpaid carers
The SoTN report highlights several barriers for unpaid carers in getting both a statutory Carer’s Assessment and direct payments. Helplines hear from carers who don’t realise they’re entitled to an assessment, or who’ve asked the council for help and reportedly been told their care is just “what they’d be doing anyway”. This often breaches the Care Act 2014’s requirement that assessments should be ‘carer blind’, meaning no assumptions should be made regarding a carer’s presumed availability or willingness to provide support.
The report also points out that approximately 70% of unpaid carers who contact local authorities get information or signposting only, with no direct support. This increases the pressure on unpaid carers and highlight’s the system’s inability to properly support them. The report links these issues to the increase in safeguarding risks, as care plans often rely too heavily on unpaid carers to fill the gaps left by workforce shortages and underfunded services. This often leads to burnout and instability for carers and the people they support.
On a day-to-day basis, providers should ensure that roles and responsibilities are clearly documented in care plans so that any significant reliance on unpaid support can be quickly identified and escalated to commissioners before risks arise. Services should also take the time to actively signpost individuals to information about their rights and available support options, including direct payments.
Having clear, comprehensive documentation in place is a crucial step in addressing these issues early and demonstrating your proactive governance and compliance to regulators. For more information on how ClouDoc can help or for any document-related enquiries, contact the team today at 0330 808 0050 or email us at support@cloudoc.co.uk.
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