Understanding Faith and Social Care – Faith in Partnership Week 2025
8th – 12th September 2025
On day three of Faith in Partnership Week, we are excited to launch a brand new stream of work for the APPG on Faith and Society, ensuring the voice of faith is heard as part of Baroness Casey’s review of adult social care.
This Faith in Partnership Week we are delighted to announce a brand-new stream for work for the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Faith and Society, looking at faith and adult social care. On October 15th, the APPG will be holding a parliamentary roundtable to explore how faith and social care meaningfully intersect.
Adult social care is a broad term covering a wide range of services and support, including care homes, care provided at home, adaptations, aids and equipment, and other such support for older people, those who have a disability, or are otherwise in need. Some people may also temporarily benefit from these services for a short period of time after being discharged from hospital. Social care can be provided for physical and mental health issues
The work owes its conception to Anna Dixon MP (Officer of the APPG), who highlighted the valuable benefits faith-based provisions of social care can offer at our last AGM in February 2025. Many faith-based organisations already contribute to supporting social care within their communities, for example in the form of a dementia lunch club or bringing food parcels to the homes of the elderly and less mobile. Despite such initiatives, they often don’t perceive themselves as ‘social care providers’ per se, due to a theological ethos of care, support and compassion. Their valuable work can therefore remain unrecognised by local authorities and wider government departments.
Nevertheless, emerging research is beginning to standardise the intersections between faith and care into tangible policy and research frameworks. Examples include the 2023 Carers UK report, Carers of Faith, and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York’s 2023 report Care and Support Reimagined: A National Care Covenant for England, which set out a radical and inspiring new vision for England’s social care system drawing on Christian theology and tradition.
This year, the new Labour government announced an Independent Commission on Adult Social Care, chaired by Baroness Casey, which we hope will duly consider the role faith and faith-based organisations play in providing social care.
The APPG is keen to build upon prior research, the experience of faith-based organisations and people with lived experience at the intersection of faith and care, identifying practical recommendations and building cross-party consensus. It is also keen to work with the Baroness Casey Commission to ensure the faith-based perspective is heard.
The APPG Faith and Social Care Roundtable
On October 15th, the APPG for Faith and Society will be hosting a parliamentary roundtable on the intersections between faith and social care, chaired by Anna Dixon MP.
The format for the roundtable will be a loosely structured open dialogue, with some framing questions and springboard topics to guide us along the way.
We hope that the roundtable discussion topics will explore:
- Experiences at the intersection between faith and care, both lived and organisational. This could include faith and drawing on care and support, faith and unpaid caring, faith and formal provision of care, and faith and the care workforce more broadly.
- Current faith-based provisions to social care and ask what is happening already, what more can be done, and what support is required to do so.
- Opportunities for developing a more standardised social care service which is functional and compassionate. For example, we’d like to discuss the idea of a National Care Service, as well as the possibility of gathering a willing coalition of organisations at the intersection of faith/care to take forward action. We’d also like to explore how the Faith Covenant might be a vehicle for practical partnership at a local level.
Ultimately, this roundtable will mark the beginning of the APPG’s research into social care. The data and discussion borne out of this roundtable may be expanded into a submission to the Casey Commission and, looking further ahead, we hope that this roundtable will help set the parameters for future work into reform of the social care system.
We are particularly aware that wider reforms to the system are needed desperately so that people can access the care they need to live full and dignified lives. As the Archbishops’ report pointed out so beautifully, theological traditions and considerations towards care can be sustainable and fruitful frameworks.
Please get in touch with us if you’d like to know more about this work, or if you have any reflections of your own about this important area. We’d love to keep you informed.
8th – 12th September 2025
Faith in Partnership Week celebrates cross-sector work taking place in the UK at a local and national level and encourages its expansion.
