A pair of Commons select committees has joined forces to launch an inquiry on the long-term funding and provision of adult social care.
The Communities and Local Government (CLG) Committee and the Health Committee are hoping to feed into the debate ahead of the adult social care green paper due in summer.
The committees have called for written submissions, with a deadline of 7 March, to assess how best to fund social care sustainably beyond 2020, as well as the mechanism for reaching political and public consensus on a solution.
The committees are expected to report in May.
Cllr Izzi Seccombe, chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, said: 'The Committees are absolutely right to focus on long-term funding solutions and how to build political and public support for them. We do not need a major overhaul of our care and support system; the Care Act provided that and the vision it sets out in legislative terms enjoys widespread support. What we need is consensus on funding solutions so the Care Act vision can be realised.
'Long-lasting reforms cannot come soon enough to prevent more care providers going out of business, contracts being handed back to councils, care workers losing their jobs and less investment in prevention, which is impacting on all those who rely on social care, and hindering the ability of social care to help mitigate increasing pressures on the NHS.'