Parliament’s Adult Social Care Committee has published its call for evidence, inviting the public to provide their views on what needs to change to create a fair, resilient and sustainable care system that better enables everyone to ‘live an ordinary life’, and in so doing, to have greater choice and control over their lives.

The Committee stated it is particularly keen to receive submissions from ‘experts by experience’, by which it means those who draw on care and support, and those who care for them. The deadline for submissions is Friday 27 May.

“Across many different conditions and personal circumstances, people with care needs rely for much of their support, care and independence on carers,” the Committee added, “and in many ways, both the people who draw on care and support and their carers are largely invisible.”

The Committee’s inquiry will, therefore, consider how that entrenched invisibility of adult social care impacts on the lives of people who draw on care and support and lives of the people who enable them and care for them. It will explore what needs to change to create a fair, resilient and sustainable care system that better enables everyone to live an ordinary life, and in so doing, to have greater choice and control over their lives. In doing so, it will acknowledge the diversity of ambitions and aspirations that individuals with specific care needs have for their lives across every age, and consider how adult social care should best enable them to achieve these different goals.

The Committee will focus on three key issues: The invisibility of adult social care, and its consequences; better support for carers; and putting co-production at the heart of care.

Baroness Andrews, chair of the Committee, said: “While people understand by experience what the health service does, very few people understand what adult social care is, how it works and why it matters, until they themselves or their family are directly affected.

“This relative ‘invisibility’ means that it can be difficult to bring about positive change on the ground, not least because so much is so far from sight.

“In launching this inquiry, our main purpose is to understand and recognise how this invisibility can be dismantled and how those who draw on different types of support and care at different ages can fulfil their aspirations for a full life, as well as their families and friends who care for them.

“By listening and learning from those who will share their experience and expertise with us, we also seek to reflect on what the meaning of social care should be, and ask how far the system remains from realising that meaning in the everyday lives of people who draw on care and their families.

“We encourage a wide range of witnesses to come forward and submit evidence, particularly those with lived experience, in the full knowledge that your views are valued and will have an impact on the future of adult social care in England.”