Why I Am Including Social Care in the Conversation About UEC
When we talk about urgent, emergency, and crisis care (UEC), the focus often lands firmly on health services — 999 / 111 and ambulance response, urgent community response and home treatment teams, urgent treatment centres and emergency departments. But to really understand where change is needed, we need to take a step back and look at the wider story of health and social care in the UK.
Health and Social Care: A Shared but Fragmented History
Health and social care has always had a fragmented relationship — whilst healthcare is delivered through the national health service and free at the point of need, social care has remained largely means-tested and locally governed. This separation has led to decades of tension, repeated policy reviews, and calls for reform.
Serious Case Reviews have consistently highlighted the dangers of these divides. Failures in communication, delayed referrals, and siloed decision-making often leave people falling through the cracks, especially during crises. Each review has called for the same thing: greater integration, stronger partnerships, and a focus on people rather than systems.
Allied Health and Social Care Professionals: Different Roles, Shared Goals
Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) and Social Care Professionals such as Social Workers and Care Home / Care Agency Managers work from different perspectives, but their aims overlap. AHPs focus on restoring and enabling function, improving participation, and supporting health and wellbeing. Social care interventions aim to maintain independence, provide protection, and meet daily living needs.
But both play critical roles in physical and mental health crisis - both are essential in ensuring prevention and recovery from crisis is safe, sustainable, and person-centred.
Practical Integration in UEC
Integration ambitions for both the NHS 10-Year Plan and Department of Health and Social Care point in the same direction: health and social care must stop operating as parallel systems and start functioning as one. In UEC, this could look like:
Shared triage and referral pathways so that support is not delayed by bureaucracy and can support the shift from hospital to community.
Integrated digital records to ensure all professionals can see the same information and act on it, supporting the shift from analogue to digital.
Joint crisis teams where AHPs and social care professionals respond together and work side by side to support the shift from sickness to prevention.
These changes won’t just improve flow — they’ll reduce the pressures on UEC, reduce health inequalities and address unwarranted variations whilst providing safer and more effective care.
Looking Ahead: Future Growth and New Perspectives
When I think about the future, I can’t help but reflect on the passions of people around me.
My wife, Mel, has previously worked in services supporting adults with learning disabilities and currently within education supporting children who have special educational needs (SEN). She sees every day how crisis is too often managed reactively rather than prevented, with disparity between health and social care provision when it’s needed the most. Integration and preventative action across health and social care will support more holistic care, improve quality of life and reduce the impact of crises later — across the life span and spectrum of health.
My friend James is passionate about autism and neurodiversity. These groups also often experience health inequalities and unmet needs. With rising prevalence, UEC services will face new challenges — not only treating the crisis, but also adapting environments, communication, and pathways to ensure inclusive care.
My own experiences have shown me that AHP and social care workforce also has a high prevalence of people with autism spectrum disorders, mental health conditions, and other neurodiversities. Working in crisis care is emotionally demanding, and staff living with these conditions may feel the strain more but may also be less likely to seek support. We also cannot shy away from the exceptionally high sickness absence and suicide rate within this workforce, often both attributed to and caused by the current pressures. We therefore need to take a more holistic and integrated approach to how we support staff welfare and development. Otherwise staff retention will become an even bigger problem and pressures on UEC will just continue to grow!
Where TE Tracks Fits In
I don’t pretend to have all the answers yet. But I am certain of this: the future of UEC depends on breaking down barriers between health and social care, listening to lived experience, and preparing for the new challenges on the horizon.
At TE Tracks, our focus has always been on supporting clinicians to increase confidence and build capability for the future. As these new areas of need emerge — whether that be social care, special educational needs, or neurodiversity amongst the workforce — we will explore how to bring them into the conversation. Because they are not side issues; they are part of the bigger picture.
