The National Care Association (NCA) has merged with the Registered Nursing Home Association (RNHA) to strengthen the voice of social care providers.

The merged organisation will be called the National Care Association and will include over 1,100 individual members.

Ian Turner, executive chairman of RNHA and Nadra Ahmed, executive chairman of NCA, will continue in their roles and co-chair the new representative body. They intend to manage the merger without interruption to current services and activities.

Turner said: “The new NCA is the natural choice for all social care small and medium sized providers. We know our members do not have middle management to translate policy into action within their services; hence, we are used to performing that translation. As small and medium providers, we understand the need for advice and guidance to be practical for small businesses. Together we can strengthen our representation at government level enhancing the services to our memberships.”

Nadra Ahmed, co-chairman, said: “We believe, in the interest of our memberships, a strong and united force should emerge for all providers from this bold decision by our boards. We face considerable challenges, a further delay in any promise of reform and funding challenges making it critical that the interests of small and medium sized providers are fully represented at both local and national levels. We are often dismissed as a fragmented sector with no single voice – this merger will challenge government on any such assumptions.

“The new NCA board will strengthen our expertise by identifying lead directors to take responsibility for policy in each part of the ASC, ie, in nursing, residential care, care at home, supported living, learning disability and mental health. Our experts will focus our approach on each unique service area whilst being able to bring together common areas that affect all service types.

“Our priorities will be to support our members with issues relating to workforce challenges and support providers to expand digital and e-commerce.”