The new leader of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services has warned that social care is facing a tough twelve months. Richard Jones, who is the Association’s incoming President, said challenges would include maintaining the momentum for a sustainable settlement for care and support

Mr. Jones is the executive director of adult and community services for Lancashire County Council. Warning of difficulties in the year ahead, he said: “ADASS has much to contribute in terms of the learning we have done to date and the leadership that we have provided to the wider reform agenda for public services and working with people as citizens with real choice and control.”

He said the Association also had a major role to play in the development of leadership and in different ways of working with communities and other partners on new approaches to delivering positive outcomes. “You can’t mandate integration from a national level and we need to move to a better rebalancing of influence and shared leadership between the centre and what is done locally just as we need a rebalancing of what is done by public sector agencies and what is developed and commissioned from voluntary and community sector resources,” he said.

Richard Jones was born in Macclesfield but grew up in Kent where he took his first non-qualified job in social care. His first post as a qualified social worker was in Bolton and he worked in Cleveland and Manchester before being appointed as Director in St Helens and going on to be an assistant chief inspector with the Social Services Inspectorate in the north west.